How About Working Only 4 Days a Week?

“Don’t Count the Days, Make the Days Count!”

-Muhammad Ali

At the cusp of a new decade, 2019 has seen a major shift in the aspirations of the working professionals of India. As analysed by numerous recruiters of major companies, the “Work-Life Balance” is now on the top priority of any job applicant.

As defined by Susan Heathfield, “Work-life balance is a concept that describes the prototype of splitting one’s time and energy between work and other important aspects of their life.” It means different for every individual. For some it is giving more time to themselves, for others it is just spending more time with family. There are numerous articles and case studies on the internet today, which gives a thumbs up to the fact that working for longer hours and extra days leads to increased stress and hence, increased health issues. Forbes has also agreed to the fact that this may also lead to hurting relationships and the overall happiness of a person, which in turn leads to lower productivity of employees.

To solve this problem, Microsoft recently experimented with a 4-day work week in its Japan office. “The trial was a part of Microsoft’s ‘Work Life Choice Challenge 2019 Summer,’ a project that examined work-life balance and aimed to help boost creativity and productivity by giving employees more flexible working hours. Microsoft Japan closed its offices every Friday during the month of August and found that labor productivity increased by 39.9% compared to August 2018. Full-time employees were given paid leave during the office closures.” (www.businessinsider.in)

So, we moved a step further on this one and thought that what if Indian companies implemented this 4-day work week. Would there be a similar increase in productivity? We asked this question to the working professionals of India and the results were surprising, yet interesting!

As we saw, out of a 100%, 13% of people opted for ‘no’ as an option. We were shocked and were keen on knowing the reasons for this. So, we went out to enquire about the reasons for people’s responses. Some of the replies were:

To conclude, we’d like to say that the idea of working 4 days a week was received both positively and negatively by our fellow Indians. Maximum were in favor of it but some were not. The inner side of all of us, is definitely hoping for this to happen in India soon so that we can start planning our long weekend trips which were on hold for ages!

So, let us know about your views on this crucial, yet interesting topic in the comments below!

Thanks,
Team Gioco!