Article originally in the Financial Times. Other articles .
Pilita Clark is a biznis commentator Financial Times.
A few weeks ago, the 29-year-old chief of a small technology startup in Wales commented on LinkedIn that he was going to try a new way of working. “We are abandoning a four -day working week,” said Ald Nelmes, whose employees worked for two years about 32 hours a week from Monday to Thursday, and their wages did not decrease compared to the previous five -day week.
He claims that production has increased and improved the maintenance of employees. Therefore, he is going to take the next step and try a completely flexible 32-hour working week for three months. Employees could work on any time on any day from Monday to Sunday, wherever they would like. The aim was to make his Cardiff Lumen SEO more attractive as possible, founded in 2020, for parents, new employees and its current seven workers.
Less time, more ideas
To be honest, the response to his contribution was great. Almost a thousand people commented on the idea that, according to many, sounded “epic”, “brilliantly” and “stunning”. Many asked if Nelmes accepted employees. (It is planned).
And some asked a question that I thought was the first to me: How can something like that, for God’s sake, work? How do people know who ever works? Do employees feel obliged to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week? How can the company respond to the needs of its clients?
Nelmes admits that this effort requires discipline. Every Monday using the software platform delegates the tasks of employees depending on how many hours every job should take. The messaging tool informs everyone whether people are available or not. Meetings are preceded by a great preparation to prevent waste of time.
Everyone has to work at the same time at least two or three hours a week, but Nelmes thinks that the world of work in the corporate is too industrialized for digital age conditions. Therefore, it is worth letting people adapt to their working time as much as possible.
“I dare say that because employees have more time outside the focused, regulated and structured work, they tend to come to the office with more ideas,” he says.
Transition to more flexible forms of work
Lumen seems to be an exception. British Foundation 4 Day Week Foundation He has been supporting a 32-hour four-day working week for years, but her campaign director Joe Ryle says that most companies have adopted the idea of a four-day working week.
In his words, a minority of organizations tries 32 hours during five working days. However, he did not know of any that would try to make a full version of 32 hours for the seven days proposed by Lumen.
I understand why some could try it if they work in the office sector and have a business as a lumen whose employees do a lot of work individually, on tasks such as preparing materials for corporate websites. They would also need a boss, such as Nelmes, who likes to travel and lives in winter for several weeks in the Canary Islands. (“You meet a lot of interesting people and it’s simply healthier.”) And it would certainly help if it was a small business.
Nevertheless, Lumen’s attempt fits into the transition to more flexible forms of work that has prompted the pandemic, and which persists to a greater extent longer than many, including me, expected. The conventional four -day working week itself was more than critics, although he may not be as successful as some of his advocates hoped.
Ever less than a percentage
The INDEED job portal states that the share of job offers offered by a four -day working week has increased significantly since 2020 in the United States, Germany, France, Canada and the United Kingdom. However, it is still less than one percent, even in the United Kingdom, which has the largest share of the five countries.
In 2022, Belgium gave employees the right to apply for a four -day working week, but only by densifying the existing working time, not by shortening it. Other regions and many companies have also tried this idea.
Out of 61 organizations participated in the United Kingdom’s Great Six -monthly test in 2022, 56 decided to continue this model, the Foundation said 4 Day Week Foundationwhich currently registers more than 230 organizations with a four -day working week. Most of them have 10 to 50 employees.
The largest is Atom, a bank based on applications that has approximately 470 employees. Many work in industries such as technology and marketing. However, many of them undoubtedly lead the bosses as the Nelmes who believe that this is the way of the future, and what is decisive are young. Their ideas can be kept much longer than you think.
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