Demand a 4 Day Week

00:00:01 one of the big puzzles that we’re only starting to understand is why in this current day and age we are working still very approximately the same hours as people working 100 years ago [Music] we’ve got fantastic technology now we’ve got computers we’ve got machines that will do the work of many individuals and yet this hasn’t reduced the amount of work that we do so now since the pandemic people’s imagination about how the world of work might be different has changed fundamentally we’re using our imaginations to think

00:00:34 things could be very different why have we continued to work in the way we do and what do we need to fix it keeping people involved in the labor market is a very important part of an inclusive Society it’s the idea that we all stay in work but working shorter hours to me is a very positive view of the future I’m confident that a society where we spend less time in paid work and more time doing all sorts of other things it would be so much nicer of society for individuals and for the planet too [Music]

00:01:14 thank you I’ve been thinking about work and why it’s good for you for many decades now one thing we should always ask when anyone tells you that something’s good for you you should ask the question how much do I need what’s enough what’s too much and when I started asking those questions about paid employment nobody could provide me with an answer to my great surprise that’s the question I started to ask and the answer was a big surprise we did a lot of number crunching we spoke to a lot of people

00:01:44 and we found that sure enough those people who are outside of the labor market their well-being tend to be much lower but when we looked at people inside the labor market you only needed to work one day a week to get all the benefits of mental health awesome anything more than that and that for good reasons you might want to work more than one day a week you didn’t get any additional benefit from it we call it a four day week but actually it could be many different things it could be that everybody stops at work a

00:02:12 couple of hours earlier each day some to organizations everybody has Friday off others rotate it through the week this is the biggest trial that’s ever been mounted where all of the participating organizations have this clear 20 reduction in working time the organization has been working with so far tend to be in the private sector but across the whole range lots of White Collar jobs computer programmers Architects we’ve got shops we’ve got a fish and chip shop we’ve got a school we’ve got service providers quite a big

00:02:43 range but we need to expand beyond that productivity is one of the most difficult things to measure particularly for each individual what we’ve done in the project is asked each organization what’s important for them whether it’s making a profit or seeing a certain number of customers each week providing a certain quality of service and that’s what we’ll be monitoring throughout this trial to see where they have maintained that same level of performance an overwhelmingly they have I mean they’ve been hitches

00:03:12 I’m not saying how many niches but overwhelming they did manage to achieve that some economists said that was going to be impossible to get that increase in productivity to offset a 20 in reduction in working time we seem to have achieved it so how did people manage to get the same amount done in four days as they’ve done previously in five there are all sorts of ways in which employees were very keen to find efficiency gains themselves very common story was that they used to have long meetings that weren’t

00:03:40 benefiting people and there were too many people in those meetings and they’ve found out new ways of communicating or had much shorter meetings and they’re actually enjoying those meetings what people weren’t enjoying wasting time at work if we look at the great social thinkers over the past 100 150 years like marks like Keynes who got most things right about the way the world was going one thing that they both seem to have got wrong is that there was going to be a natural reduction in working time with technology whether it’s coming

00:04:10 from employees or employers it clearly hasn’t happened the interesting thing in this project is when people hear that they’re going to have to reduce their working time but keep the same productivity that’s when they start to look for technology they look for software that’s going to help them make themselves more productive waste less time so it’s actually by bringing about working time reduction we increase the take-up of technology that was something we hadn’t expected at all and really one of the most interesting things to come

00:04:36 out of this project there’s lots of ways in which we’re going to judge the success or failure of this probably the single biggest thing is seeing whether those organizations continue to work as a four day week after the trial social scientists shouldn’t predict the future because they always get it wrong but I do think it’s highly likely that the four day week or people working much shorter hours each week is going to become the norm when we ask employers a lot of them are convinced it’s going to

00:05:06 happen the thing that’s been different about this project for me is I’ve been talking to people who have seen these massive benefits and it’s been uplifting to me just talking to so many happy people over the last six months when people can see the very real way in which they could benefit from these changes they are suede bike it’s almost too good to be true but it’s not too good to be true this is a change we can bring about we can bring about it quickly and I think just have such a better working

00:05:33 life and family life for so many people

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