Working hours: three days at the weekend, four days at work – is that the future?

Hand on heart: how much do you really work? Are you checking your emails after getting up in the morning? Do you work on the presentation in the evening after work? And can you also be reached on the weekends? You are probably already working officially 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday. Then there is overtime. In Germany alone, employees buckle up. And a lot of it is of course unpaid, of course.

The study results of the past few years are clear: Too much work makes us listless and unhappy – and above all less productive. Of course you can be enthusiastic about your job – but you shouldn’t get burned. Companies are increasingly recognizing this and putting on the brakes. The motto seems to be that no longer burn the employees. And so companies are experimenting with reduced working hours. The New Zealand fund company Perpetual Guardian has launched such an experiment.

Four-day week: can it work?

In May, the company prescribed a four-day week to its 240 employees – initially only as an attempt, of course. The experiment was accompanied by researchers from the University of Auckland and the Auckland University of Technology. The employees were paid in full despite the reduced working hours. And: The weekly work goals were not reduced either. However, it was no longer just about working hours, but about targets. The result after two months: Around every fourth employee was happy about a better work-life balance, and seven percent of employees were less stressed. And: the company did not experience a drop in productivity.

Reduce working hours by 20 percent – without the business suffering? Can that be true? In fact, customer service at the fund company even improved. A statement by the researchers: The boss had made it clear that he only wanted to keep the four-day week if the company continued to work on a comparable basis. As a result, the employees were motivated, according to one of the scientists to “”. And knelt down.

Satisfied employees are – especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers – an important recipe for success for companies. “You want people to stay because of the turnover [der Mitarbeiter] is unbelievably expensive, “Professor of Economics and Strategy at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. And continues that celebrated economist John Maynard Keynes predicted as early as 1930 that, due to improved technology and productivity, we shouldn’t actually spend more than 15 hours should work during the week.

Reducing working hours – that doesn’t always work

The future has not turned out quite so rosy. And some companies that started a working time experiment with motivation had to take back the innovation, according to the US education company Treehouse. The four-day week was also tried out there. The employees are now back to the 40-hour week. Otherwise the company would have had to make cuts and layoffs. Due to the reduction in hours, customers could no longer use customer service during normal business hours. According to Megan Dorcey, Marketing Director at Treehouse, the eight-hour days also have an advantage for the team structure, as employees see each other more regularly. Other experiments, such as that of a Swedish nursing home, have since been turned back. +++ Read here: why the experiment in Sweden failed +++

Some companies get along well with the four-day week, others see it critically – the question remains: Is there a point at which working hours simply cannot be reduced economically enough? In New Zealand, the researchers believe that less than four days of income would no longer pay off for companies. “My gut feeling says that reducing working hours and maintaining efficiency could end in four days after five working days,” said one of the scientists at the “”.

Perpetual Guardian, at least, has carefully examined the reduction in working hours. The regular four-day week is possible in November. “There is no disadvantage for us”,. According to the plans, employees should be able to decide in the future whether they want to work one day less a week and which they then take off. Those who want can, according to the information, also work five days.