How cool will it be if your weekend started on a Thursday evening, instead of a Friday? WPP’s Grey New York recently brought in a radical option allowing employees to work four days a week…albeit with a 15 percent pay cut.
Hitherto instituted by corporate cultures in the highly developed Nordic countries like Denmark, Sweden and in The Netherlands, four-day workweeks are gaining momentum in the USA, UK and other economies as well. MNCs like Amazon and KPMG have four-day workweek options for some of their US employees. In fact, the society for human resource management (SHRM) states that about 43 percent companies in developed economies offer the compressed workweek option to at least some employees. Back home in India, where six-day workweeks still prevail (in some organisations), while other organisations compel and coax employees to work-from-home or head to offices on Saturdays; the reduced workweek culture, if embraced, is believed to strongly benefit both employers and employees.
Says Kashish Daya Kapoor, general manager – HR, NEC Technologies India, “Reduced workweeks improve employee productivity by enhancing focus and offer a better work-life balance to employees.”
According to Anil Ethanur, co-founder of specialist staffing firm Xpheno, since employees get more time to relax and engage in hobbies or their personal work, they benefit in terms of a more rejuvenated mind when they walk in on a Monday morning. “Along with enhanced productivity, you get more creative, out-of-the-box solutions and reduced stress levels, which benefit the organisation.”
Kapoor says the idea behind this concept is not to reduce the workload, but to have employees work more efficiently and with a greater focus for the time they are at work, “so that they achieve more in a shorter period of time.”
What is important for companies that institute a reduced workweek is to direct their employees with specific tasks and objectives within clearly measurable timeframes, says James Agrawal, managing director, BTI Executive Search.
To get five-day tasks completed within four days, companies could look towards increasing working hours. “But reducing work weeks and increasing working hours can act in a counterproductive manner. Millennials need time every day to focus on their interests outside of work and an increase in work hours may create dissonance,” says Amit Malik, chief people, operation and customer service officer, Aviva India.
But the advantages and dynamics of a compressed workweek aside, will companies in India embrace four-day workweeks in the near future? “Looks difficult,” says Ethanur, who feels that for jobs of a transactional nature like customer facing roles, “at times a minimum six days are required for completion considering the job nature.” However, he feels that jobs that are more creative with limited front-ending like research, etc. could benefit from the four-day option.
Kapoor says that it took time when the shift in India happened from six to five working days, “but it helped us to globalise.” Kapoor believes that in the time to come, more companies will embrace the reduced workweek. “It will be a key factor that can attract new talent while retaining existing one.”
According to Malik, advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning can drive this change as they help to reduce human effort.
However, HR experts feel a pay cut (like a Grey), is bound to be a casualty of a reduced workweek, “as, at the end of the day, companies need to show profits and hence cannot give the same salary when the working days are reduced by four-five days each month.” In fact, some companies might consider compressed workweeks as a tool to reduce employee costs, instead of perceiving it as a tool to enhance employee motivation and productivity.
Experts say that certain companies and sectors that are highly volatile to market conditions have started gradually bringing in the four-day working option (with a pay cut), but not with the intention of incentivising millennials or complying with the nature of the digital economy. The real objective here is to cushion employees from poor market and company performances and the resulting job losses.
Says Agrawal, “Sectors like real estate, technology, outsourcing have started asking employees to embrace such options with a pay cut so that they can avoid retrenching people in huge numbers.’’
The real objective here is to cushion employees from poor market and company performances and the resulting job losses.
MORE FREEDOM
- To get five-day tasks completed, companies could look towards increasing working hours
- A pay cut is bound to be a casualty of a reduced workweek, believe experts
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