European countries are beginning to adopt or put into trial the four-day work week as workers and employers in these countries reassess the importance of flexibility and benefits in the workplace. Euronews.next reported in February this year that trade unions across Europe were calling on European governments to implement the four-day working week but only a few countries such as Belgium have adopted this into their workforce. Closer to home, Unilever New Zealand conducted a one and a half year trial in December 2020 and found that 67 per cent of the employees reported a better work-life balance, their individual wellbeing improved, with stress dropping by 33 per cent while feelings of strength and vigour at work increased by 15 per cent. During the Fiji Institute of Chartered Accountants (FICA) 2024 annual congress last month, two teams of accounting and finance professionals from Fiji and the region engaged in a healthy debate on the benefits and drawbacks of introducing the four-day work week arrangement into the Pacific workforce.
“For” a four-day work week
According to Pamela Naesol-Alamu, chief executive officer of Solomon Islands Accountants (SIA), a four-day work week will address the issues of absenteeism, promote gender support for women, especially mothers, and also help reduce mental health issues. She said work absenteeism was a common problem in the Pacific and “most of the reasons for absenteeism is closely linked to family or personal reasons”. “We believe that giving employees an extra day will greatly assist them in sorting out their personal family matters, which will positively impact on their productivity at work,” Ms Naesol-Alamu said. “Having a four-day work week can greatly impact on women’s ability to realise their full potential or to be more productive in their workplace.” She said responses given during a workshop in Solomon Islands to a question raised on barriers to a woman’s career, found that many women consider family obligations and commitments as a stumbling block to their careers. Basic Industries Pte Ltd’s manager of financial reporting Vishaal Raman, who was on the same team as Ms Naesol-Alamu, also touched on reducing five-day work week to four as a means to help reduce stress and mental health issues experienced by workers. Mr Raman pointed out that technology evolution was supposed to make work life easier for people, but so far, this wasn’t the case. “We cannot live without our smartphones. What I’m trying to say is, technology changing was supposed to make life easier, was supposed to make work easier. This much of work, making that easier with technology,” he said. “What’s happening is that we are full throttled, work has just increased and sometimes slowing down is the best thing to do so that we can achieve more quality work.” Mr Raman said cutting down on work days could also be a cost saving measure for employers whereby “you save up on your electricity bills, your water bills, your office costs, some of the things and when you add that up, it actually adds up to a lot of money”. Their final proponent, British American Tobacco (BAT) Fiji chief financial officer Rahul Prakash, said a four-day work week meant employees get to spend more time with their families and this would result in a “happy wife, happy life” scenario. “Once you get less stress, she will be happy, you will smile, your kids too will smile, you will both enjoy more, live your life more, be more healthy, more productive, getting back to work on Monday after a beautiful three-day weekend.”
“Against” a four-day work week
“We will be burning out our workers during these four-days,” argued Aspen Medical Fiji CFO Priyashni Chand. “Employers need to carefully assess the feasibility and impact of this four-day work week on their operation, including potential changes to stampings, scheduling, and customer expectations. “From a cost assessment perspective, this is going to put pressure on the existing staff to complete certain tasks, previously done over five days, now in four days.” She said in some cases, employees might even have to work longer hours in order to complete all tasks within four days.
She also said that with the four-day work week, parents would be spending more time teaching their kids as teachers won’t have the desired time to complete their school curriculum. Institute of Public Accountants (IPA) director new markets and alliances Catherine Cleary, who called her team ‘the workaholics’, said as accountants, everyone in the room would understand that a reduced work week would result in less hours of work and “that is less money”. “What does this mean, a four-day work week? “We’re going to have to take a pay cut, four days is only 80 per cent. That’s less hours of work. That is less money. “What we’ve been talking about in the last couple days is how life is hard. We have inflation. “Do we win the lottery? Like how can we afford this? The cost of living and basically, we might have more time but that doesn’t mean we have more money,” she said. She said a four-day work week would also contribute to labour shortage “and this is why we need to continue to be workaholics”. Kiran Khatri, Lyndhurst Group of Companies group general manager of finance and IT, the final speaker from the team argued that a reduction in the number of workdays would greatly impact Fiji’s gross domestic product. He said all-time successful people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others, all talked about the importance of working in order to succeed.
“Are we going to give up success for work life balance? I don’t think so. You can’t create great things by working less, you have to put in the hours.”
Response from the floor
After the debate, the 400 plus participants were given time to vote online on whether the four-day work week is the solution to work-life balance. Only 379 participated and voted and out of this number, 196 voted ‘No’ while 183 voted ‘Yes’.
