The four day week

There has been a desire, post-Covid-19, for those of us who work to have more personal time. Life has become so much more complex, and we have had more life admin than previous generations... think of all the dimensions of family, digital lives, property, savings, mortgages, comparative shopping, recreation, food, travel... the list is endless. Some of this is that the administration that companies who provide us with service once did themselves has been pushed back onto us - we update our own addresses, payees, licences in those organisational systems, for example - and some is just having to manage more stuff in our increasingly complex lives. Working hours have been increasing (Skidelsky, 2019). Even holidays can make our lives more complicated: for example, a panoramic 700,000 year review of our world of work by Lucassen (2021) proposes that "labor legislation and even cultural norms such as holidays, festivals, or religiously mandated days of rest rarely have any impact on work done within households (and may, in fact, make more [work])" (Spang, 2023, p. 129). 

Pre-Covid, a four day week was also trialled here by Andrew Barnes, the CEO of Perpetual Guardian Trust. The findings of the shortened week trial were so positive that the firm has kept the four day week, and other companies and nations were trialling the idea pre-Covid (Barnes, 2020; Skidelsky, 2019). This includes the New Zealand branch of Unilever, who also trialled a four day week between 2020 and 2022, who also is keeping the model for their staff (NZ Herald, 2022).

Protean career theory, where staff - in a self- and values-driven way - take charge of their own development (Inkson et al., 2015) fits well with the philosophy of a four day week. With Protean career theory, career progression is shaped by self-direction, adaptability, identity, and use of personal values (Seymour et al., 2018), not by traditional organisational structures or career paths (Inkson et al., 2015). Acknowledging the importance of work-life integration, protean career theory allows us to pursue fulfilling careers while balancing the demands of our personal lives. 

So protean career theory sits well with the growing emphasis in New Zealand on flexible work arrangements, enabling us to design careers which accommodate our lifestyle preferences. Over two thirds of professional people in Aotearoa feel "that work-life balance, including flexible working, is their top priority when seeking a new role" (Employment New Zealand, 2024).

Those of us seeking more balance in our lives can target those employers allowing us more flexibility, more elbow room for self-determination, and to pack more into fewer days. They are out there. And we can put those employers who are dragging the chain on notice that employees have better choices.

Sam

References:

Barnes, A. (2020). The 4 Day Week: How the Flexible Work Revolution Can Increase Productivity, Profitability and Well-being, and Create a Sustainable Future. Hachette NZ.

Campbell, T. T. (2023). The four-day work week: a chronological, systematic review of the academic literature. Management Review Quarterly. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-023-00347-3

Employment New Zealand. (2024). Work-life balance: How work-life balance arrangements can be good for employees and for business. https://www.employment.govt.nz/workplace-policies/productive-workplaces/work-life-balance/

Inkson, K., Dries, N., & Arnold, J. (2015). Understanding Careers (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Lucassen, J. (2021). The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind. Yale University Press.

NZ Herald. (2022, November 2). Global giant Unilever keeping four-day working week in NZ after trial. New Zealand Herald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/global-giant-unilever-keeping-four-day-working-week-in-nz-after-trial/6Q4KHHDJ3REMNMK3STNCTJISWA/

Perpetual Guardian (Firm) Coulthard Barnes (Firm); Auckland University of Technology, University of Auckland; Minter Ellison Rudd Watts (Firm). (2019). White Paper: the four-day week: guidelines for an outcome-based trial: raising productivity and engagement. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60b956cbe7bf6f2efd86b04e/t/60c3d8519bc93c7da4823124/1623447637957/Four-Day%2BWeek%2BWhite%2BPaper%2BFebruary%2B2019%2Bfinal.pdf

RNZ. (2023, June 22). NZ not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global named among Time's most influential companies. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/492462/nz-not-for-profit-4-day-week-global-named-among-time-s-most-influential-companies

Roy, A. (2018, October 2). 'No downside': New Zealand firm adopts four-day week after successful trial. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/02/no-downside-new-zealand-firm-adopts-four-day-week-after-successful-trial

Seymour, J., Nicholson, T., & Edwards, T. (2018, March 1). “I have goals and plans to achieve them”. An online survey of the career perceptions of trainee and practising educational psychologists. New Zealand Psychological Society, 47(1), 4-12. https://www.psychology.org.nz/journal-archive/I-have-goals-and-plans-to-achieve-them.pdf

Skidelsky, R. (2019). How to achieve shorter working hours [White paper]. Progressive Economy Forum (PEF). https://www.progressiveeconomyforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/How-to-achieve-shorter-working-hours.pdf

Spang, R. L. (2023). The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind, by Jan Lucassen, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2021, 544 pp., US$25 (paperback), ISBN 9780300256796. Journal of Cultural Economy, 16(1), 128-130. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2022.2131598