Can work become less about the when, the where, the how much?

Episode transcript

Samantha Laine Perfas: With labor shortages around the country, at least for now, a lot of employers are thinking of creative ways to attract workers. One possible answer: shorter weeks.

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Welcome to “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Samantha Laine Perfas. Today, I’m joined by Laurent Belsie, the Monitor’s longtime writer on labor and business trends. He recently reported a story with Erika Page and Shafi Musaddique that explores the idea of a four-day work week. For some companies, that means shortening the work week to 32 hours. For others, it’s jamming 40 hours into four days to give employees an extra day off. However companies are approaching it, the hope is achieving better work-life balance without sacrificing productivity. Thanks for joining me, Laurent.

Laurent Belsie: Nice to be here.

Laine Perfas: So why are companies considering a four-day work week to begin with?

Belsie: Even before the pandemic, there was growing demand for more flexibility in schedules. After the pandemic, when the labor shortage became very acute, companies, especially in service, high tech, were eager to find ways to attract workers. And a four-day workweek was one of those perks.

Laine Perfas: Is this a new thing, or have attitudes around how much we work shifted over the last few decades?

Belsie: It’s not a new trend. The number of people who were working four-day weeks tripled between the 1970s and 2018. So it’s something that’s been growing. But even at the end of that period, there were only like 8 million workers. We’re not talking about a huge base here. The pandemic accelerated all that. I think it brought forward some questions that have been maybe increasing in the workforce. When I started work, it was all about America needing to regain competitiveness. That was back in the ’80s. And we ran that course. And somewhere in the 2000s, I think people started saying, “Well, wait a second, why are we working? Is this really a fulfilling life?” And so other questions about work-life balance came to the fore.

Laine Perfas: And what is it about work-life balance that people are looking for?

Belsie: I think it’s different things for different people. For many people, it’s just more time away from work, and that’s certainly a valid thing. And we’ve seen that over time. So, back in the ’80s and ’90s when Japan went from 48 hours or whatever down to 42 hours of work per week, and in South Korea, when they did a similar change in the 2000s, they spent more time on things that you think, well, you know, maybe that’s OK, but it’s not great. So for the Japanese, it was … they watched more television. For South Koreans, it was [time spent] on personal grooming. So those are certainly ways that one can find more balance. But I think that other people are thinking about what kind of things they could do that would increase the meaning of their leisure time.

Laine Perfas: I want to talk about some of the stories and examples that you uncovered in the reporting. You actually reported this with two younger reporters. What was that experience like? 

Belsie: They uncovered some amazing stories. When we kick off the piece looking at a woman in Boston. She would always go down to see her dad on weekends in Newport, Rhode Island. In the old times, there wasn't a lot of time because Newport is busy on the weekends and she had just very, very little time with her dad. When her company in Boston went to a four day week, suddenly she could go down on Fridays and she found it much more conducive. So we kick off the piece with her painting on a Friday afternoon with her dad and James Taylor playing in the background. And so that's a really neat application of the idea. We also came across in London a woman whose company went to a four day week. She spends her weekends managing cabaret shows and circus acts. So she herself has used that extra day to practice and train her circus acts. And then we came across a lawyer and, you know, lawyers work insane hours anyway. Right. But her firm went to a four day week and she was able to reduce her hours and be able to be much more involved in the education and togetherness with her daughter and was seeing measurable improvement in that relationship as a result. So people are finding all kinds of ways to use their extra time off to do amazing and engaging things. As far as working with new reporters, they have just such enthusiasm because this four day work movement is particularly strong among millennials and Gen Z. It certainly was fun to be able to channel their energy. But being someone who's been through a few recessions and had to report on them, I'm a little bit more cautious in my enthusiasm as to how quickly this might become mainstream. 

Laine Perfas: As different companies are experimenting with cutting the hours and working less, are they sacrificing productivity?

Belsie: Well, the studies are mixed on that. One of the disconnects is that when managers are asked about this, they say that productivity has gone down. Whereas if you ask the employees, they say their productivity has gone up. 

Laine Perfas: In reporting the story, one of the values that you all felt was important to talk about was balance. How did that play a role in the reporting of this story?

Belsie: Well, two kinds of balance. First is just the journalism balance that we’re all trying to do, which is to inject some caution into all this, and say, there are lots of people who don’t believe this is workable. Recently, for example, Elon Musk at Twitter laid down the law for his employees and said, Look, either you’re going to become hard core or you should leave.

But the other idea of balance that we found was that people were really looking for this work life balance in their lives. People were doing a lot of thinking about what part of work is most important. And there’s certain things that you do that are kind of autopilot: going through email, or making some phone calls, etc. And then there is what some people call “deep work”: those concentrated times where you’re focused completely on dealing with a challenge. A lot of the proponents of a four-day week say, Look, people don’t do deep work for hours on end every day. They do maybe two or three hours on a good day. So if we can capture that deep work, then we can do this and give people more leisure without taking away their real productivity. 

And the innovation that I was seeing was people thinking about how to incorporate and encourage deep work. You have those typical long tables where a whole team is kind of sitting across from each other and their screens and everything to enhance that sense of team. But that's not conducive to deep work. And so some designers of the workplace are looking at places, cubicles, ways where the environment can help you just focus on what you need to focus on. 

Laine Perfas: From the worker’s perspective, I think in a previous conversation, you actually said there’s been a redefinition of wealth.

Belsie: Someone we quoted in the story said, You know, you can take your wealth as money or you can take the wealth that you generate as time.

Laine Perfas: Well, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on the story.

Belsie: It was a pleasure. 

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Laine Perfas: Thanks for listening. To find links to some of Laurent’s work as well as this episode’s transcript and show notes, visit csmonitor.com/whywewrotethis. This episode was hosted by me, Samantha Laine Perfas, and co-produced with Jingnan Peng, edited by Clay Collins. Our sound engineers were Jeff Turton and Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2022.