Durban - South African businesses have until next Sunday to decide whether they will participate in a groundbreaking global experiment, the Four-Day Week, that could turn the working world on its head.
Several countries have signed up and completed the six-month experiment in which the traditional working hours are reduced by a day.
In essence the project promotes 100% pay for 80% of the work.
South African Four-Day Week coordinator Karen Lowe, said so far 21 local companies had signed up and dozens of enquiries have been received from organisations trying to determine whether the idea was feasible.
Lowe said results from countries like Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK showed that giving workers three days off a week led to improved mental health, increased productivity, bigger profits and a reduction in staff absenteeism.
The South African pilot would run concurrently with the EU pilot which worked out well because of the similar time zones, she said.
Lowe said participating companies also had the freedom to choose whether or not the entire workforce would take part or if only a cross-section of staff would be affected.
According to the Four-Day Week website, the global initiative is the brainchild of New Zealand entrepreneur, Andrew Barnes.
In March 2018 his company Perpetual Guardian embarked on a four-day trial in which all 240 employees were given a day off each week, without docking their pay.
All other conditions of employment remained the same.
Essentially staff worked for 30 hours but were paid for 37.5 days and were asked to deliver the same amount of work despite the reduced hours.
“To make the trial useful on a local and global economic and productivity scale, Perpetual Guardian engaged academic partners The University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology (AUT) to measure the outcomes of the company’s employee engagement and publish the results.”
Lowe says the results were astounding and based on the outcomes, Perpetual Guardian initiated the Four-Day Week on a long-term basis from November 2018.
“Andrew could not believe the results because the productivity levels went up, the revenue levels went up, but the most exciting findings were the health and wellbeing of the employees.”
The study piqued her interest and Lowe decided to reach out and bring the idea to South Africa, although not fully convinced it would gain traction.
She said in 2022 there were six global pilots, and academic institutions were co-opted to do research on the initiative.
In most countries the businesses partnered with a local research company to analyse the outcomes.
Lowe said according to Barnes the concept of working five days was almost 100 years old, and it was time for change to bring about a work/ life balance because “we can’t do it all.”
She said day-to-day we waste and lose a huge amount of time at work. “We are productive on average, about two to three hours a day,” said Lowe.
She said this meant employees were already working fewer hours, without realising it.
So far 21 local companies, ranging from micro enterprises to a large management consultancy, have signed up to participate in the next pilot which involves about 500 employees.
Lowe said the deadline to join the project was next Sunday and the pilot begins on February 1 and runs until July 31.
She said the biggest company participating had 90 people involved and the smallest had three.
Director and strategic partner at The Digital Media Collective (TDMC), Nicole Ashe said they were a digital agency “which in the real world never sleeps” and so were always looking to work smarter rather than harder.
She said the results from the UK pilot were “quite intriguing” for a business like theirs which always prided itself on doing things differently.
“We are always on 365 days, seven days a week, it never stops in our industry. So it’s something that is going to take quite a bit of effort but we believe the reward will be worth it,” said Ashe.
She said they considered this project a means of rewarding their employees and part of the package which would make it appealing to work at TDMC.
“So we are looking at it as a bonus as part of joining our team. We believe the mental wellbeing of staff is important.”
Ashe said all 52 of their employees would participate in the Four-Day Week pilot but on a rotational system so the business was always open even though each worker will get off one day in the week.
“If people just batten down it can be done.”
She said initially some employees were shocked because of the workload on everybody's plate, but now everyone was looking forward to an extra day off.
“We find a lot of time wasting is done on the amount of cups of tea that get made, the number of smoke or vape breaks; so cut those down and the number of hours you save per week are exponential,” said Ashe.
She says realistically it was just a matter of finding four hours in a week because in many companies productivity on a Friday was low.
Results from the UK pilot show that 80% of the staff do not want to return to a five-day week, no matter the amount of money offered, she said.
Cape Town advertising agency 3Verse said after meeting with Lowe to discuss the project, it was an “easy yes” from them to be part of the process.
Co-founder Kay Orlandi said everyone was excited, although there was a bit of trepidation in terms of figuring out the details of how it would work.
The staff complement of 24 people have opted for the flexible approach whereby different people take off at different times of the week.
She said the industry had long glamorised the culture of “work hard, play hard”, but that attitude was changing and everyone understood the benefit of having time off work to do “life stuff”.
“Everyone is so keen. Most of our team sees it as an opportunity to do the stuff you always say you want to do, but never really get a chance to do, whether it’s spend time with the kids, doing light admin or just personal stuff and a bit of health and wellbeing.”
She said many people also had side hustles and this would give them the time to focus on that.
She said the creative industry understood the importance of downtime because inspiration didn’t come from sitting at your desk for hours, but when you did other things to free your mind like walking your dogs, brushing your teeth or being on the treadmill.
Orlandi said if the results of the six-month pilot are as positive for them as it has been for companies in Europe and the UK, it will be more than a perk and become an essential offering from the company.
“Already we have found that just by publicly talking about participating in the trial, it’s a very effective talent recruitment tool.”
The aim, says Orlandi, is for all employees to flourish, enjoy life and be productive because many had suffered from burnout which did not make sense: “We are not saving lives, we are just making advertising.”
Gauteng-based KLA Market Research director Caitlin Bauristhene, said as knowledge brokers they understood the impact of burnout and all 42 members of staff would participate in the pilot study.
Bauristhene said the results that came out of the global trials were amazing, and so for a research company the decision to participate was an “easy sell, even if the only thing we get is a metric for productivity”.
She said while most employees were positive, it would require a mindset shift because those with doubts say: “I can barely fit what I do in the five days.”
Lowe said companies willing to participate in the trial only had this week to come on board and there was a small fee involved.
She can be contacted on Karen@4dayweek.co.za
The Independent on Saturday