If you had the option of working four days a week, would you take it? The answer seems obvious: who wouldn’t want another day off? But companies are worried a shorter workweek will result in less productivity and other issues.
Some 33 companies in the U.S. and Ireland recently trialed a four-day workweek over a six-month period. According to Forbes, a follow-up survey revealed many of those companies wanted to maintain the four-day workweek even after the trial concluded. Moreover, some productivity metrics actually rose: “Companies in the research reported revenues that rose 8 percent over the study period, burnout scores that fell for two-thirds of employees and an amount of sick or personal leave time that declined by roughly a couple of hours a month.”
With all that in mind, knowing that your productive output had to remain the same, would you rather keep working a five-day workweek or cut back to four days? Dice recently polled the collective on LinkedIn and found overwhelming support for the four-day workweek.
Specifically, some 89 percent of respondents wanted a four-day workweek, versus 11 who wanted to work the "traditional" five days. That's pretty decisive.
If technology professionals actually want a four-day week, though, they may have to overcome some concerns from their managers and company leaders. Over the past few years, companies across the country (and world) have experimented with hybrid work, where employees come into the office two or three days per week and work from home for the rest. However, repeated surveys have indicated a significant percentage of managers question the ability of employees to “get work done” if they’re working from home even part of the week. While hybrid work isn’t the same thing as a four-day workweek, it’s clear that many managers are perpetually paranoid about their teams’ productivity.
If you want to petition your company to consider a four-day workweek, you’ll need to lead by showing how you’ll still accomplish all your goals and deliverables despite the reduced hours. Once you have that “productivity plan” sketched out, you have a better chance of landing the schedule you want.
