We don’t need to ask our employees if they’d like to have a four-day workweek. Of course they would! But as supervisors, what’s in it for us? Should we even consider it?
No doubt the workforce would appreciate one day off per week to take care of personal business or enjoy more leisure time. Those of us in the C-Suite could probably put the extra time to good use, as well. And there’s definitely a demand for it: studies show that half of today’s job seekers desire some kind of flex-time or compressed work week. But the notion hasn’t caught on. Blogger Richard Eisenberg offers some ideas why:
Culture: Managers tend to promote staffers who “put work first,” which means coming in early, staying late and not doing errands on company time.
Four-day workweeks make our jobs as managers tougher: It’s harder to direct workflow when staffers’ hours are unpredictable.
Still, a growing body of research tells us there are perks to be had for companies who offer it, and progressive employers in a variety of fields let all or a portion of their staffers work four days a week, with technology and accounting firms leading the pack. Here are some of their creative tactics:
- Let staffers alternate between weeks of five nine-hour days and weeks with four nine-hour days, so they get a day off every other week.
- Let employees work eight-hour days with every other Friday off, even if doing so means taking a small pay cut.
- Or there’s the 4/10 model, which requires employees to punch 10-hour days on each of their four workdays. This one has a risk: you can wind up so knackered after four days of grueling hours that you have no energy left to enjoy the day off.
As executive recruiters, we at Conselium acknowledge that offering this kind of schedule could be considered a major employee perk – one that could aid significantly in recruiting and in retention rates.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
