​Will a four-day work week be a hit in South Africa?

This was the question Prof Mark Smith, Director of the Stellenbosch Business School, explored in a recent Stellenbosch Forum lecture. The lecture, the eight and last in the series for 2022, was themed 'A Four-Day week: time to work smarter?'

The Stellenbosch Forum lecture series was started in 1990 and provides regular opportunities to SU staff and students as well as members of the public to learn more about the world-class research conducted at SU. Presented in an accessible and understandable way, these lectures offer both academics and non-academics a platform for critical debate across disciplinary boundaries.

In his lecture, Smith said the current proposal to pilot the four-day work week in different parts of the world (a six-month pilot will be run in South Africa in 2023) shows that in the post-pandemic environment, we all have a reflection of how much we work, how much time we spend in the household, and how much time we have with our loved ones, family and children.

“We are interested in the four-day work week because of the pandemic and post-pandemic effects. We are questioning how we work and live in that environment.

“In a short period of time, we demonstrated that the impossible is possible. Everybody can work online, we run organisations, we can run countries, we can deliver services at a distance and we don't all need to be at the office on the same days.

“The pandemic also accelerated concerns about work-life issues, retention, recruitment and productivity.

“Previously the nice kind of flexibility might have been reserved for managers and white-collar workers, whereas the pandemic showed that many more people could work from home, from a distant, and also have autonomy about how and when they work."

According to Smith, results from the pilot show that a four-day work could lead to greater work-life integration, productivity gains, and an improvement in people's quality of life as they have more time for leisure in principle. He added that it is also close to the ideal “target" working time and that companies involved in the pilot showed improvements in retention and more people wanted to work for them.

There are, however, potential downsides to a four-day work week.

“What if we can't get the job done in four days? For some organisations it might not be possible. How would workaholics cope? The increase in intensity is a potential risk. There is also a potential risk that we may exclude some groups with some enjoying three days of leisure and others working five days."

Smith said there is a perception that a four-day work week is a magic bullet that would solve all our problems. Focusing specifically on South Africa, he said there is also the risk of unintended consequences of implementing a four-day work week.

“We have relatively long hours, high levels of employment, and low levels of productivity. There is a legal framework that strictly defines how many hours people should work. The employer-union relations are also more contentious and conflictual than in some countries."

Smith added that we will also have to think about the impact of loadshedding and extreme inequalities.

He said it is important to dispel any misconceptions about the four-day work week.

“It not working part-time; it is not a compressed working week; and not everyone works the same four days. It is also not partial employment which exists in some countries where instead of people being retrenched, everybody works less."

Smith pointed out that the four-day work week is not a new idea. In the 1920s, British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that we would be working 15 hours a week in future, and in the 1950s former president of the United States Richard Nixon also anticipated a four-day work week.

He added that the eight-hour day and 40-hour week are a norm that emerged in the 20th century.

“It is a kind of imaginary rule. It has grown out of the manufacturing context of what was a normal and regular working week. It is the norm that dominates how we might think about time in society, but it doesn't apply to everybody. Students work part-time, people in the service sector work fragmented hours. There are many people who are not working the standard working time of 40 hours a week."

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