In 1926, Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week.
Edsel Ford, Henry’s son and the company’s president explained that: “Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation….The Ford Company always has sought to promote [an] ideal home life for its employees. We believe that in order to live properly every man should have more time to spend with his family.”
Henry Ford said of the decision: “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege.” At Ford’s own admission, however, the five-day workweek was also instituted in order to increase productivity: Though workers’ time on the job had decreased, they were expected to expend more effort while they were there.
Now, with learnings from Covid, we see this: “Thousands of UK workers begin world’s biggest trial of four-day week“.
Interestingly, the thoughts among those taking part in this trial are very similar to the leadership of Ford some 96 years ago, except they were moving from a six to a five-day working week, now these 70 companies in the trial are looking at moving from five to four days.
In 1926 the six-day work week was the paradigm, the standard set for reasons that we now can’t remember why. Perhaps the 2022 standard of a five day work week in the office will later come to be seen as a paradigm that was smashed as it didn’t make sense any longer.
However, with any paradigm, there will be those who have a default reaction of “stick to the status quo”. I imagine the objections voiced at the time to the ideas of Ford in 1926 would be similar to those I saw voiced in the FT.com comments section around their own article on the trial now in 2022.
Typical objections this week were centred on the idea that people would still do the same number of hours in a day, plus that reducing days in the office would reduce productivity as a given, etc etc. So many assumptions and paradigms within a paradigm, so little openness and creativity, so let me try some for a moment:
- The average person in the UK works 36 hours per week or a “9-5”, often including “lunch breaks” of an hour, hence 35 hours “paid work” in a 40 hour week.
- Now shift those 35 hours to four days and you have an 8.75 hour day, to which let’s cut that break to 45 minutes, then that means 9.5 hours “in the office”, say 8:30 am to 5:15 pm as a typical choice.
- Next, make the day off a standard one, close the office every Friday so that there is no pressure on presenteeism and also that customers and suppliers understand the office is closed on Fridays every week.
- One more thought and from a Covid era learning, make a default “work from home” day as Monday.
- Add these up and you get the same working hours from your people, who also save at least two hours per week of commuting time (the average commute is over 60 minutes round trip in the UK, over 85 minutes for London commuters).
- One more productivity/life hack is that a slightly longer day can, for many results in more productive work time.
Of course, these thoughts are not uniformly suitable, nor have I added in many further options around flexibility, but I put it to you that they would increase the attractiveness to current and potential future employees.
Which of these would you choose?:
- A five-day work week, each day is 9-5 in an office with an average commute of at least one hour each day
- A four-day work week, with a working day of 8:30 to 5:15, and with Monday working from home and every Friday off
Give the two choices above and I can imagine a large number would go for option 2.
Retaining existing staff and attracting new staff is one of the key things top of mind for every leader I talk to internationally. It has been for several years and has increased markedly since Covid and with so many people re-assessing their own personal paradigms around work and life.
Some employers are throwing money at this and other related issues. For example, one leading financial services firm (with a less than stellar gender equity record) now gives a full year of fully paid maternity leave, plus six months after that to ease in 2-3 days a week, again at full pay.
That example is a large investment to focus on both their ED&I stats and to retain quality staff. The example I give is, however, almost alchemical. it would come at zero cost (the hours worked are the same) to the employer, but employees would be happier as this gives them more time to themselves, plus the working patterns with happier people will result in higher productivity.
Consider where you work, what is the current working environment setup and are you considering smashing your own paradigms?