Question

Is there a responsibility or should organizations/leadership make a more concerted and visible effort to create opportunities for employees to separate themselves from the workplace?

Some research suggests those who work four days a week instead of the five, are more productive in the course of the work day for the four days they are in the office/workspace!

What opportunities do you see presented with organizational approaches. Hindrances?

Answer 1

Ethically there is a responsibility from organizations to provide employees with a normal work life balance. However, legally there is no such responsibility. While the result of the research can provide interesting insights about working 4 days a week, the organization’s interest lies in overall productivity. While 4 days’ work per week will make employee’s productivity rate increase, the overall productivity is likely to reduce.

This again is a subjective matter and may vary from organizations in different industry. For example, any creative work may yield better result through higher productivity rate. This means for any creative task, working 4 days will be beneficial to the organization. On the other hand, the conventional work will provide lesser productivity. Considering 8 hours work day, 4 days a week means 32 hours of work in a week. If we assume that the productivity in this scenario is 80% then the effective work hours per week is 25.6 hours. On the other hand if we consider 5 days a week and 70% productivity then the productivity is still 28 hours a week. This means for conventional work more days.