- A "pioneer pilot" for a four-day working week is now recruiting in South Africa.
- Its leaders will even help you convince your boss to try it, then help your boss convince his board it was a good idea, if necessary.
- Employees will get paid 100% of their current salaries for 80% of their current time.
- A four-day week is well suited to South Africa's problems such as load shedding and unemployment, promoters say.
A coalition of South African organisations, including Productivity SA, is now recruiting for a"pioneer pilot" in 2023, when employees at participating companies will work 80% of their current hours for 100% of their current pay.
These companies, say the promoters of the plan – and a growing body of research – can expect to still achieve 100% of their current output, while saving money. They may also help solve unemployment, make life easier for single mothers, and contribute to reducing climate change, among other benefits.
If your boss will need some convincing about all of that, the local 4 Day Week organisation would like to help. And then it would like to help your boss convince the board, or equivalent oversight body, that the change should be permanent.
That, current experience suggests, may not be hard. One of the world's biggest four-day work week trials, in the United Kingdom, just hit its halfway point this week. Of the 70 companies participating, 86% already plan to keep the four-day schedule when it ends, citing the same benefits generally reported in such experiments: happier people, better output, and lower costs.
"I would argue this is not actually rocket science," Andrew Barnes, author of the book "The 4 Day Week", told a launch webinar on Wednesday. "If you have a more engaged, more empowered, more focused workforce, they will deliver more output than one that isn't."
Barnes, and the local partners working with his global organisation that promotes the four-day concept, say the typical arguments against the idea have all been knocked down in trials. Manufacturing companies have seen the benefits of shorter hours, as have organisations that bill by the hour, such as law firms.
For some, the benefits manifest in fewer sick days, which means fewer temporary workers who have to be brought in at a high cost. Other companies have lower staff turnover and a lower cost of recruitment.
In South Africa, says Barnes, electricity outrages make it particularly attractive to squeeze more work into less time, so that "when load shedding hits, you've actually made up for that time".
As for unemployment, one thesis is that four-day weeks encourage some organisations to hire more people using the money it saves on overheads due to a compressed work week.
Additional benefits include reducing travel – and resulting pollution – by a fifth, and giving a break to the high proportion of single mothers in South Africa, whether by reducing their childcare costs or just letting them catch their breath.
The trial is due in February, but the signup deadline is October
In South Africa, the 2023 trial is due to be supported by the non-profit 4 Day Week Global organisation co-created by Barnes, with Stellenbosch Business School handling research on its impact.
Now the 4 Day Week SA Coalition needs participants.
It will cost some money, says Charlotte Lockhart, 4 Day Week Global co-founder, to pay for the workshops, mentoring, and other support involved – but not a lot of money. It will also take some time, in ways such as working with researchers – but not a lot of time.
In return, every participating company will get "a confidential impact assessment specific to each organisation", based on productivity and worker wellbeing metrics determined before the start date. The kind of thing that is handy "if you have leadership teams and boards you have to convince", says Lockhart.
On the other end of the ladder, ordinary employees who need to convince a CEO or MD to take the plunge may find they are pushing on a half-open door, says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Program Director at 4 Day Week Global.
In other countries, the organisation sometimes find "company leaders drive this because it is something they want for themselves. CEOs, entrepreneurs, they are facing exactly the same challenges with overwork and burnout that everyone else is."
The deadline to sign up for the first local pilot is the end of October, so that preparation and onboarding can start in November. In January and February 2023, baseline metrics will be established. Then, between February and July 2023, participating companies will drop required work hours by a fifth, and see what happens.
Just how those companies do that, who works what days, will depend on conversations between managers and workers. It seems tricky, but with everyone motivated it typically turns out not to be that hard, says Barnes.
"If you overthink it, if you try to solve all the problems in the C-suite [among top executives], what you'll find is you talk yourself out of it," he warns.
But if you let individuals figure out how to get done what they need to get done – and how to stop doing things they should not be doing – it generally goes well.