Businesses venture into four-day work week

Since businesses and administrations are struggling to find skilled employees, employers are beginning to look more towards the needs of their potential people, particularly the request for shorter work times, to stay attractive and competitive.

Our colleagues from RTL spoke to Raiffeisen Bank director Yves Biewer about this new trend: "I notice it most with the young candidates that we are trying to recruit, almost all of them ask about their work-life-balance. This term really interests the young generation, and if you don't have a concept for it, it makes recruitment much more difficult."

Raiffeisen has for that reason introduced what they call "quality time", an additional off day that employees can take each month if the workload and team organisation allow it.

After the first seven months of the initiative, Biewer assesses it to be a success: "I absolutely believe, and analyeses will show so, that productivity is not suffering under it. On the contrary, I think that people will rather try to be efficient and work out an advantage."

According to Biewer, even their branch employees can use 'quality time'. Everything is a matter of organisation, noted the Raiffeisen director.

British study points to advantages of four-day work week

After looking at close to 60 companies that tried a four-day work week for six months, a British study found that the overall results were positive: employees reported improvements to their mental and physical health and that they were able to better look after their families. Businesses all the while continued reporting a healthy amount of growth and that less than half of the regular number of people quit.

That was however only possible since the companies in question made efforts to improve their productivity levels. For instance, operation sequences were analysed and unproductive meetings abolished. As a result, employees gained more time, which in return reduced their stress levels and brought down the burnout risk by 70%.

It should be noted that the participating businesses do not require a permanent presence from their employees, as is the case in the hospitality sector, for example.

Communication is key

According to shuttle bus provider Flibco, the most important parts of a successful strategy are communication and organisation. The company, which provides bus connections across Europe, officially introduced a four-day work week this summer.

Flibco director Tobia Stüber believes that this was only possible thanks to the general work method and the mentality of their employees: "For us, this is the logical consequence of a long journey. When I came here four and a half years ago, we completely changed everything. Everything means the IT technology, but also the concept of working. We are really going with this 'New Work' trend. Now it's actually through innovation, through optimisation that we've come to the point where we've said, ok this now makes it possible to go for such new forms as New Work."

Stüber is convinced that employees are able to ensure that their tasks are being done even if it happens outside of the traditional work hours. He therefore concluded that the responsibility of driving innovation, such as the four-day work week, is down to businesses rather than politicians.