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Four-day working week would boost productivity and happiness, Oxford University study suggests
A four-day working week would boost productivity, a study by Oxford University economists suggested.
The gains from improved productivity could make up for the "lost" fifth day at home or enjoying leisure time,the lead researcher told the BBC, suggesting it is potentially the ultimate virtuous working circle to improve work-life balance.
It comes as it was reported Sunday that Labour is exploring proposals that would see workers enjoy a three-day weekend, but get paid the same as a five-day working week, by companies passing on efficiency savings from new technology to staff.
For the past six months, a team led by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, associate professor of economics and strategy at Oxford University's Said Business School, has been tracking the happiness and productivity of 5,000 call centre workers across more than 20 centres.
The preliminary findings, he said, have been "really striking." By cross-referencing a huge mass of performance data with a weekly check on each of the 5,000 workers' wellbeing, scored from one to five, the results so far appear to prove the thesis.
"We are seeing changes one week to another within individuals and their happiness is positively related to their productivity, the number of calls they do, the quality of the calls as measured through customer satisfaction, less absenteeism and even [improved] sales. You name it," Professor De Neve told the BBC World Service's Business Matters programme.
It replicates in the field a previous Warwick University laboratory study where participants were given chocolate or listened to a 20-30 minute comedy clip before being made to do a productivity task. Conversely, another group were asked to remember a family loss and write about that before doing the task.
"These manipulations of happiness had impact. We found that there was an 8 per cent to 12 per cent change in productivity between treatment groups and the control group who had not had their wellbeing manipulated," said Professor De Neve.
He argued his findings go some way to showing that a four-day week could maximise happiness and productivity, such that it would be a model with no potential economic loss for companies.
"I would argue the four-day working week is spot on in terms of finding or striking that right balance between improving the work-life balance and unlocking the happiness potential from that in terms of productivity gains. This outweights the net reduction in productivity from working a day less."
He cited the case of a New Zealand company, Perpetual Guardian, which conducted an eight-week study where its 200 staff were paid their normal five day rates but put on a four day week. The result was a 24 per cent rise in staff engagement across the board, greater creativity, fewer sick days, improved punctuality and less bunking off early.
"[The four-day week] leads to people being more engaged in the job. They are less stressed or less worried about things like having to bring the kids to school or having their partner bring the kids to school," said Professor De Neve.
"There's also a neurobiological effect. When you are more positive about your job and your life while on the job, it relates to being able to be more productive."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Scandanavia and Iceland have been at the forefront of previous experiments. In 2016, Reykjavik city government cut off half a workday each week for a year for its full time employees. The costs and productivity remained the same despite less time in the office. Sweden conducted a similar experiment with a 32-hour week.
Although Professor De Neve said it might make an economic model, he admitted he was not someone who practised what he preached: "I work long hours including evenings and weekends. I am in one of the lucky positions that I am so in flow with what I do that I lose track of time," he said.