Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1410761
OPINION 16.9.2021 Abigail Marks Abigail Marks is Professor of the Future of Work at Newcastle University - theconversation.com SCOTLAND is to become the latest nation to trial a four-day working week, after the SNP government announced it was setting up a £10 million fund to enable some office busi- nesses to cut workers' hours without reducing their pay. Similar trials are underway in Ireland and Spain, following on from trials in Iceland sev- eral years ago. Some English firms have also been experi- menting with four-day weeks, while other nations such as Ja- pan are encouraging their em- ployers to think about it too. But how helpful is a four-day week for workers really – and how realistic? e truth is that there are problems with this attractive idea that tend to be ignored by the enthusiasts. So what are they and can they be overcome? Productivity and the 40- hour week At the heart of a nation's eco- nomic activity is productivity, which in this context refers to the total output of each work- er over a particular time peri- od. In the UK at least, the tra- ditional view is that a full-time working week of approximate- ly 40 hours is the way to max- imise people's productivity. "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest" was the phrase coined in 1817 by Robert Owen, the famous mill owner, philan- thropist and labour rights ac- tivist. is vision of a five-day, 40-hour work week is rooted in an industrial setting, when most people worked outside the home, in factories and oth- er manufacturing facilities. In such a setting, working from home or outside of business hours was impossible. ose days are long gone, and two-income households are no longer rare. Nowa- days, when both members of a couple would normally be working, there is less time for children, looking after older relatives, chores, errands, pre- paring food and everything else that is undertaken outside of working hours. Managing these tasks has be- come ever more complicated and stressful. A four-day working week should therefore be a massive relief, so it's easy to see why lots of people are in favour of it. So where's the problem? Britain's long hours culture e average working week in the UK is now 42.5 hours, and the nation is also the un- paid-overtime capital of Eu- rope. As many as two-thirds of employees are said to work longer than their contracted hours, averaging 6.3 hours of free labour per week, usually sitting in front of a computer or smartphone at home. is implies that employers are unlikely to be able to af- ford to reduce each employ- ee's workload – particularly after the financial pain of the pandemic. Many employers signing up for a four-day week would probably therefore ex- pect workers to undertake the same amount of work within four days that was undertaken previously in five. Assuming that the average person is currently spending all their working hours active- ly working, doing the same job in four days would mean working over 12 hours a day. at's considerably more than Robert Owen's eight-hour day, and clearly not feasible for the majority. Even if it was feasible, it wouldn't be very productive. Research shows that medi- um-skilled employees who work in front of a computer and work beyond 4.6 effective hours a day produce smaller quantities of output per hour due to fatigue. For more in- experienced employees, the numbers are worse. People who work excessively long days also have lower levels of overall wellbeing. While people have been working at home during the pandemic, they have not nec- essarily been working longer hours but the hours they have worked have been more in- tense, with fewer breaks and less movement between tasks and locations. is actually produced short- term productivity gains, but this shouldn't be a cause for celebration: with increased work intensity and more po- rous boundaries between home and work, employees found it difficult to mental- ly remove themselves from work, further raising the risks of exhaustion. Having to work even more intensively over four days is arguably more than many could cope with. Some organisations might look at practical issues like these and decline to be part of a four-day work week. Others will say it's impossible due to the nature of the work (emer- gency services, medical work and hospitality). Many workers will say it's unworkable for them due to the volume of work (bank debt collectors, university staff ); or because they already work crippling 12-hour shifts and can't cram more into a day (de- livery drivers, many self-em- ployed workers); or don't earn enough to have the luxury of having three days off each week (care workers, gig-econ- omy workers). Alternatives For most of us, a four-day work week therefore feels more like a pipe dream than a realistic ambition. It will bene- fit the very few whose organi- sations can reduce their work- load to make it appropriate to four days. is is likely to apply to government workers, since their departments will have to be seen to be a "four-day week success". But more generally, a four-day week is likely to ex- acerbate existing inequalities and create resentment against those who get to have a three- day weekend. Yet with nearly half of the UK workforce indicating that they are suffering from stress, clearly something has to be done. Workers need to be working fewer hours, and par- ticularly fewer intense hours. Governments need to focus on ensuring that employees have increased control over the hours that they work, sup- ported by independent bodies that can ensure that business- es uphold good working con- ditions. e UK government's Em- ployment Bill was supposed to help in this respect, though it has been controversially de- layed by COVID. Or, if we are serious about a four-day week, we'll need to make it affordable for more employees to manage on less. at would require a universal basic income – and this is one excellent reason for pushing for it to happen. Why the four-day week is not the solution to modern work stress