Beyond the four-day week: why flexible job design matters for everyone
Published: 10 Sep 2024
As a charity campaigning for more flexible and family-friendly working, it’s great that the four-day week has become part of the national conversation. We are fully supportive of organisations who trial this way of working, and by so doing are recognising the benefits flex can bring. It is certainly an option in helping working parents and carers manage their caring responsibilities.
However, we should be viewing a four-day week as just that – an option. This particular option, working for 80% of the time for 100% salary in exchange for a commitment to maintain 100% productivity, cannot be considered a serious option unless we also consider job design. For many in the UK, it is already a struggle to fit their allotted tasks into the hours they are paid for. We are working the longest hours in Europe, a culture that does not make us more productive or competitive, in fact, we are significantly less productive than countries like Germany and Denmark who work fewer hours.1
If we start with job design, that is, making human-sized jobs that have realistic and achievable expectations, in addition to some autonomy over the location and hours worked, we are more likely to enable people to enjoy productive and fulfilling lives that suit individual needs. While a shorter working week will certainly suit some, for others doing reduced hours across a longer week works best for their family and caring responsibilities. The danger is that without going back to job design, bringing in a four-day week risks swapping one kind of unrealistic rigidity for another. There are many ways to work flexibly, and the best solutions are those that match both what the business as well as the employee need.
We hope that these conversations continue and are the start of broader thinking about how best to structure work so that it benefits both employees and employers. As a charity, we advocate a range of flexible options that can meet the needs of our diverse population. Currently there are many people who don’t have access to the flexible working they need.
Our research found that those on lower incomes were twice as likely to have an informal flexible request turned down, and that almost half (46%) of working parents work in roles where remote working isn’t possible.
Over 40 years of experience working with businesses tells us that employers on the whole want the best for their people and their business. But without paying due attention to their unique roles and circumstances we risk further entrenching a system of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. With an agile, solution-based approach, we can ensure that the future of flex can be for everyone.
1 A recent study found that, on average, full time workers in the UK are working 42.3 hours per week. This is higher than all other EU countries. Denmark has the shortest working week at 37.8 hours.