Microsoft Japan tested a four-day workweek and has found the experiment a huge boon to employee productivity.
The tech giant recorded an almost 40% jump in productivity levels after cutting its work hours as part of a wider project to promote healthier work-life balance.
the firm saw productivity, as measured by sales per employee, rise 39.9% compared with August 2018. That boon was thanks in part, Microsoft said, to meetings capped at 30 minutes and an increase in remote conferences. Meanwhile, the firm saw a fall in costs, with 23.1% less electricity used and 58.7% fewer pages printed over the period.
All I have to add is; I approve all of this, especially the 30 min meeting cap, seeing as meeting is the main productivity killer.
The main thing is whoever is running the meeting needs all the people for their segments, but those people ususlly only have 1 small thing in the meeting that they need to speak on. Honestly most could be done via email or 1 on 1 phone call. The parts that everyone needs to be on is probably only 30 min.
There was a proposed 6 hour 5 day week from somewhere north of Europe, Finland or Sweden or somewhere like that. I would love to see bow that would work out compared to 4 regular length days.
I also wonder, as I have not read the article yet, if this is just the initial boost as a result.of things being new and fun for a little bit, will this productivity slide back to pre-change levels.
You will get a maximum level of productivity from your employees beyond a certain amount irrespective of hours worked.
I think also the meeting cap at 30 minutes would be a big win too. If you can’t get your shit together to articulate your concerns with the relevant people who should be there inside of 30 minutes there is something wrong - typically either there are bikeshedding types who should not be present, or you haven’t done your homework and are attempting to escape responsibility by sharing blame with others.
context of japan is important. the work culture there is “no one leaves until everyone leaves” so if anyone has to work late on something everyone does and it is considered disrespectful and rude to leave “early”. people often work 60-80 hour weeks, so a 4 day week is still 40 hours or more in japan. limiting it to 4 days instead of 5 is probably doubling the amount of sleep these people are getting.
From all i’ve seen so far, 4-Day workweeks are a benefit to everyone. Even at 10 Hours a day every experiment has shown increased Productivity and Happyness.
Yet it’s close to impossible to get that through management, because all they see is “1 Day Less” work done by every employee. Even if Hours per day increase. Very few are willing to give it a proper try.
I realize that some smaller companys might struggle to provide all week service to their customers, but in mid to large size companies you can easily do 2 Shifts, Monday-Thursday and Tuesday to Friday with both having 3 day weekends.
I seriously hope this idea gains traction. Japan is really bad, but everywhere else, people are working more and more, spending less time with friends and family and in return, sickness goes up. It’s not sustainable at this level. Work Intensity increased massively in the past years/decades. It’s like going from walking 3 hours every day to running a marathon every day. One is feasible, the other isn’t. The higher the intensity the longer the rest has to be to not burn out.
4-day workweek would be nice even if it means 10-hour days… Here in Brazil we go from 0800 to 1200 and 1400 to 1800 when you live close to your job and have lunch at home (our lunch is more elaborated, bean with rice FTW, would be closer to noth-america’s dinner[is this the word?]), and 0800 to 1700 with the minimum of 1 hour lunch (maybe the law changed it to 30 min, I’m not sure).
If we got to work from 0700 to 1200 and 1400 to 1900 wouldn’t be so bad having either friday, monday or even a break in the middle with wednesday.