The 4 -day working week does not seem to cause stress from “compressed times” as it was feared. The confirmation in the wider study on the topic.
The detractors of the short working week now have an less topic to cling to: those who have definitively passed to this organization of work gains better physical and mental health, greater productivity and greater satisfaction (in addition to the same salary as before).
The wider study on the topic so far, published on Nature Human Behaviour and conducted on almost 2,900 workers of 141 companies in six countries who joined the four -day working week. The fear that less time available to carry out the same tasks involved an additional source of stress It seems unfounded: scientists have not found evidence of this effect, which if present, is overcome by the benefits of the greater rest.
Do not be caught unprepared
Wen Fan, sociologist of Boston College, in Massachusetts, analyzed with colleagues the data on 2,896 people of 141 companies that in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom had joined a pilot program held by the No-Profit 4 Day Week Global to help companies organize a working week on four days.
For eight weeks, the companies were able to work with expert coaches to review their workflow on a working time corresponding to 80% of the previous one, leaving employees the same salary as before. They were cut the clearly inefficient processes that consumed timelike the meetings that are not strictly necessary, and the workers compiled questionnaires about their mental well -being, for example by telling what would frustrate them in the workplace.
Physical and mental benefits
After six months, those who had joined the Corta working week they heard A increased productivity, better health and greater satisfaction at work Compared to the employees of 12 companies who had evaluated to participate in the program but then desisted.
Compared to the questionnaires completed at the beginning, the workers of the 141 participating companies have also reported lower levels of burnout (The professional exhaustion), greater satisfaction than before and better mental and physical health: scientists believe that this can depend on a better quality-quietity of sleep, on a lower sense of fatigue and the feeling that their way of work had improved.
Intensification of work: doubts dispelled
As for the fear that the so -called intensification of workborn from the need to have everything that was done before in a smaller number of hours, could cause stress, we can set aside. No sources of additional stress emerged, probably because, when it rested, you make fewer mistakes and you work more efficiently, saving time.
However, it must be said that those who had supervision tasks have reported more improvements than simple executors.
What does well -being depending on?
Difficult to say what, exactly, caused the benefits found: the fact of feel better treated And to enjoy the trust of one’s garments? The day to the week in less than commuters? Being able to put up plus days to have fun or restor is having less sources of distraction in the workplace?
The next studies on the short working week will have to find more impartial ways of measuring workers’ productivity. In the meantime, and as the first indirect response to the issue of sustainability of the less day, just know that 90% of the companies involved in the study decided not to go back and fully embrace the reduced time.
