Employers realize that if they can change their minds about where people work, they can also change them about how many days they are at work

The business environment is changing, the way of working is no longer what it was just a few years ago, and while many employers still shy away from remote work or a four-day workweek, data suggests that for the well-being of their employees they should discard old settings and views on how work is done.

Namely, management professor Christopher Barnes from the University of Washington emphasizes that employees who work one day less per week are more rested, more productive, more satisfied, and generally healthier.

“When a person does not have to sacrifice sleep because of work, everything changes for the better. Namely, sleep and work are in constant conflict and the most common sacrifice is the individual's health, which is also reflected in how they perform their job,” said Barnes.

He is joined in this view by sociologist and economist Juliet Schor from Boston College, and she bases her opinion on findings gathered through extensive monitoring of organizations around the world that have recently been experimenting with a four-day workweek.

“Employers realize that if they can change their minds about where people work, they can also change them about how many days they are at work,” Schor points out and offers concrete figures that arrived after the introduction of a shorter workweek:

“After the change from a five-day to a four-day workweek, we saw that fewer than seven hours of sleep per night was reported by only 14.5 percent of employees compared to 42.6 percent before that change. On average, everyone sleeps 7.58 hours during the night. That is almost a full hour longer than when they worked five days a week.”

Also, employee productivity remained identical or improved, which means that organizations that gave up one day did not give up the results that had been recorded. And that is what this story can continue to be built on, one that the vast majority of employees anywhere in the world would certainly welcome with open arms…

Source: ictbusiness.info