These findings come at a time when businesses and their employees are struggling to recover from the pandemic, with ongoing high rates of burnout, stress and fatigue.
“We definitely saw much higher engagement levels among staff—higher than we’ve ever recorded,” said Jon Leland, chief strategy officer at Kickstarter, which finished its pilot in September and permanently adopted a four-day schedule for its 100 or so employees.
The organizations involved – ranging from an Ohio RV builder to a Dublin climate nonprofit – registered gains in revenue and employee productivity, as well as drops in absenteeism and turnover. Workers on a four-day schedule also were more inclined to work from the office than home.
One weakness of the study is that all of the participating organizations opted in; the leadership was already biased toward four-day weeks. But employees, who didn’t necessarily opt-in, were won over, as 97% of the nearly 1,000 in the study wanted to continue with four-day schedule.
What did they do with that extra time off? Hobbies, housework and self-care.
Another low note came around gender: The study found no change in the balance of household tasks, meaning that when men had a free day off, they didn’t do more housework, though they helped a little more on child care.
All in all, the benefits of the 4-Day Week Schedule are still debatable!
Would your organization want to be involved in this? Pour in your thoughts in the comments section down below!
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