New Study Bolsters Public Health Case for a Four-Day Work Week

For many of us, Monday is the beginning of another brave and long-term mode of operation. But today a new test study may emphasize a healthy approach to do our work: a regular four-day work week.

Scientists at Boston College were investigating, published Monday human behavior in nature. During six months, researchers followed the results of about 3,000 employees in 141 institutions after the four-day work week without any salary reduction; They also compared them with similar workers in the work that clung to a typical table. As a result, four-day employees have expressed more work satisfaction and have been less burning than they do before the passage, as well as less combustible than a weekly working people. These progress seemed especially clear in people who have reduced their time eight or more hours.

Gizmodo, along with classifications for the future of work, the authors and Juliet Schor to discuss the findings in the depth began to learn the authors. Fan is an economist and sociologist at Boston College, Associate Professor, Schor at Boston College. The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity and grammar.

Ed Cara, Gizmodo: The concept of the four-day work week has recently drew attention from both employees and scientists. Did your team interested in learning this topic?

Voice: We have long dates that study the time and work welfare.

I wrote a book called Extremely exhausted American Years ago, but did not find the opportunity to learn to reduce the time (without payment cutting). Wen have a Long History Stress, mental health, including the health and well-being of employees, etc. He also affected many dimensions, including health measures in the results of the health and labor market. The pandemic was one of them and was the key to creating speed for a four-day work week.

Fen: I just wanted to add that Juliett was incredibly generous to invite to cooperate over this project. Research on previous hours of work inspired the countless scientists in the field. I think the paper reflects both of the interests of both research. This really made a joint effort with Guolin GU, both with Guolin GU, both of our wonderful researchers, which analyzed more and more than what we want to count, as well.

Gizmodo: What were the main roads before this last study?

Fen: There are two main results in this work. First, we see that the four-day work week has improved the welfare of employees. This result comes from comparing changes in four prosperity indicators among testing companies and control companies. Supervisory companies were interested in participating in first, but as a result, it was not for various reasons. In court, we found that the work of employees is satisfied with the remarkable improvement of mental health and physical health, but also a significant reduction in processing. On the contrary, none of these changes were observed among the employees of control companies.

Find the second key about what explains these improvements. We examined various work experience and health behaviors. We found that three factors played a particularly important role: work capacity (productive productivity of employees self-evaluated), a proxy for sleep problems and fatigue. In other words, after passing the four-day work week, the workers saw themselves more skilled and experienced fewer sleep problems and lower fatigue levels, all of which contributed to well-being.

Gizmodo: What are these work possible? Should more companies offer this option to employees, such as employees? How large can be scaled, including its benefits and risks?

Voice: This work has many effects – some employees, others for organizations and society.

This is an unique intervention that can turn off the employees better without violating the vitality of the organizations they work. Our research shows that both the company and employees benefited. (This document only consists of employees, but there is a success for employers. Their employees will be happier, more loyal, more productive and less. At the same time, the intervention itself is “to force” the company to encourage the improvement of companies.

There are important questions to solve. How to work in very large companies. We have 5,000 organizations, but our research has no very big company. But we think it can expand in this direction. We would also like the companies more healthy productivity and performance information. We have some dimensions, but they are not complete.

We do not think that each company can do this right now, but most can be. The more difficult ones will be places that optimize their process without resulting in burning employees. And we think that some of the highly exposed to international competitions can be difficult.

However, the vast majority of employees in our economy, services in our sample companies / white collars, etc. We think this is a big area for this because it is a serious problem in health.

Gizmodo: Planning to follow the findings? If so, how? And what are the interesting directions you want to investigate other researchers?

Fen: Yes, we have already been followed. Based on the information gathered in the six-month sign in the paper, we continued to follow the participants six months later after the test. We found that all the main influences continue with the prosperity indicators that are much higher than the initial levels of the greatest effects. This reflects the real and sustainable change, not just as a result of initial enthusiasm or innovation effect.

There are many promising directions for future studies. These include additional mechanisms to investigate the benefits of prosperity, making the perception of changes in the organizational culture and how the intervention changes daily work life. We encourage researchers to take advantage of similar opportunities to conduct dedicated ethnographic research, which will allow direct observation of organizational change. This work line may notify new theories and policy interventions aimed at increasing the structure of work to restore the structure of the work.