New Zealand Company's Four-Day Week Is a Shocking and 'Unmitigated Success'
A company in New Zealand has run a trial of a four day work week for hundreds of its employees, and the results are in. Despite just four days out of seven in the workplace, a much higher part of their workers have reported better time management and increased productivity.
Perpetual Guardian, a company in the country that deals in estate planning, trusts and wills, tried giving some two hundred and forty employees a four-day work week on a trial basis, according to The Guardian.
The experiment ran over March and April earlier this year, during which the workers involved were paid for five days of work at the usual rate of eight hours a day, but were instead only required to clock in four days at a time.
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The idea was to give their employees a better work-life balance, and hopefully boost productivity and workplace commitment while dropping stress levels at the same time. The result, in that regard, was a resounding success.
"Supervisors said staff were more creative, their attendance was better, they were on time, and they didn't leave early or take long breaks," Jarrod Haar, human resources professor at Auckland University of Technology who studied the effects of the trial, said about the results.
"Their actual job performance didn't change when doing it over four days instead of five," he added. The employees, aside from maintaining their level of productivity at work, also got to spend more time with their families, as the New York Times pointed out.
The workers were also able to set aside more time for exercise, planning their meals or working in their gardens, according to Perpetual Guardian.
"Great to see a company finding a better way." Iain Lees-Galloway, workplace relations minister of the New Zealand government, encouraged more companies to try out other workweek schedules themselves.
"I applaud this instance of working smarter and encourage more businesses to take it up," he added.
