Is a four-day work week coming to an office near you? For some it already has, and both employers and workers are reaping the rewards


In October 2020, Jamie Savage launched a four-day work week at her Toronto recruitment firm, The Leadership Agency, to ease worker burnout during the pandemic. The results, she says, have been outstanding.

Productivity among the 10-person team has never been better and, best of all, revenue doubled last year. And the startup doesn’t require employees to work longer hours and their pay has actually increased due to their productivity.

“We’ve never asked our employees for anything in exchange,” she said. “It’s not a transaction.”

The company has also made shorter meetings and has streamlined the usual crush of emails with auto responses for perfunctory exchanges.

As companies slowly return to in-person work, some are looking to a four-day week as a model of flexibility in the workplace.

Alida, a tech company in Toronto, has adopted it, and the Ontario Liberal party said it would launch a pilot project, if elected, to see if a shortened week is feasible for the province. Even the tiny township of Zorra in Southwestern Ontario moved to a four-day week in December after taking part in a pilot program by researchers at York University and Western University.

But the model comes with many questions. And, the vast majority of companies in Canada haven’t adopted it.

“Companies have constraints,” said Marc Belaiche, president of TorontoJobs.ca, an internet recruitment company. “There are budget constraints and economic ones. Some aren’t able to handle paying people four days a week as if it were full-time.”

Costs for the company are also going up as only getting four days of labor are being worked, but employees receive a 20 per cent increase in pay, he said.

A four-day week does have benefits, Belaiche added, but it depends on the industry and the size of the company.

“Smaller businesses are already struggling to find staff,” he said. “Who can fill in on that fifth day? Do you get someone just part-time then? Bigger businesses can adjust or get a part-time worker or someone from a different division to cover for the day. The same can’t be said for small businesses.”

The only way for the employer to remain cost neutral is if the employees are more productive, says Jessica Kearsey, an employment and labor lawyer at Deloitte LLP. But productivity is hard to measure in the knowledge economy, she said.

“How do you measure innovation and collaboration?” Kearsey said. “It ends up being a trust exercise, because even in remote work employers can’t visibly see the output in the same way.”

The model is one for smaller tech companies, startups, or private companies that can experiment more with the four-day week or other flexible work models, she added. For companies that can’t have a day off in the week, Savage said a rotating schedule can be implemented so clients aren’t left hanging.

She said her agency’s clients weren’t aware that the company has Friday’s off until recently, and adapted to the change, which she understands isn’t always the case for other companies.

“For some, it is impossible,” Savage said. “But I still would recommend just trying it out. We didn’t get it right the first time, but we kept at it.”

Clémentine Van Effenterre, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto, said when looking at studies abroad there have been success stories. In France, a study was done in 1998 on work week reductions evaluating a five-day week with shorter hours. A positive impact was seen in terms of employee health and job satisfaction.

But co-ordinating various work schedules can be problematic.

“There is a whole infrastructure for scheduling that is difficult. There are co-ordination and organizational issues, that make it hard to accommodate varying schedules,” Effenterre said.

The real conversation that needs to take place is a societal move to flexible work, not just a four-day week, said Souha R. Ezzedeen, associate professor at York University’s School of Human Resource Management.

“There’s not just the four-day work week,” Ezzedeen says. “People desire for their own flexibility.”

That could mean one day a week at home where you work a few hours remotely or do other household chores and errands instead. In a warehouse, workers can request four days on and three days off, or choose the hours of the shift to be morning or night.

“Some kind of control over the work can make all the difference for employees. All of us are looking for a certain amount of that in our jobs.”

Companies could also experiment with the four-day week by extending hours over the four days or creating more efficient ways to work.

“The pandemic has made us feel more comfortable in evaluating employee output and results instead of hours worked,” she said. “In that sense, a four-day work week takes on a different meaning, because it’s not about hours worked. It’s about the work being produced.”

When it comes to the issue of management adapting to varying work schedules, Ezzedeen said “it’s part of the pain we need to endure to make a change that is positive for the long-term.”

Recruiting, training, performance management, and tracking attendance still need to be in place to support the shift in work schedules, she said.

But, Kearsey said accommodating various schedules can only happen for businesses that don’t often deal with customers.

“It’s not so easy if you have a storefront to manage,” she said. “You can have layered scheduling but it’s more difficult and customers might not like that they can’t go into a store or communicate with the business on a Friday.”

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Conversations are opinions of our readers and are subject to the Code of Conduct. The Star does not endorse these opinions.



Leave a Comment