What if the three-day weekend became the norm? At a time when the practice of hybrid working is becoming more balanced, the debate on the 4-day working week is gaining momentum and questioning HR policies. A study carried out in 2023 by recruitment firm Hays even revealed that 62% of the 11,000 respondents would prefer to work every day in the office on a 4-day week, rather than 5 days in a classic hybrid model.
As the 4-day working week gains ground abroad, at the end of March 2024, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal opened the way for a rethink of working hours. To offer workers greater freedom and flexibility, he said he was in favor of the generalization of the 4-day work week, launching an experiment in all ministries.
The desire for a different way of life is therefore strong. But there are many variables to consider before plunging your company into this major upheaval. To explore them, we called on three experts from ConvictionsRH, the HR, HRIS, transformation and training consultancy:
On the face of it, the 4-day work week offers an attractive time structure. There are two main models that can be applied, depending on the company's resources, needs and activities:
Before considering either model, it's important to take into account the decisive factor for employees: remuneration. According to ADP's People at Work 2022 survey, 67% of French people say that salary is the most important factor in a job. Even if 57% would be prepared to accept a pay cut in exchange for a better work/life balance, salary retention remains a sine qua non condition.
The transition to a 4-day work week raises a number of questions:
These are just some of the questions and issues to be analyzed and discussed before embarking on the rollout of the 4-day work week.
Before embracing a trend, it's crucial to assess the fundamental health of the company and its management by carrying out an exhaustive evaluation of employee experience on all motivational levers. This will help determine whether the company is on the right track with this project to transition to a 4-day working week.
Did the company already have a certain degree of flexibility? An agreement or charter remote work already in force? Take, for example, a hybrid policy that authorizes up to 3 days of remote work per week. By switching to a 4-day working week, employees would potentially only have to return to the site for one day a week. As remote work is difficult to challenge, this transition to a shorter working week could be an opportunity to renegotiate existing agreements.
The challenge is above all to legitimize coming on site by making employees understand the underlying reasons, so that they see a benefit, which could be seeing their colleagues, or taking advantage of quality equipment. According to Marine Chabot: "It's a win-win situation when people like teleworking as much as coming on site".
The manager will thus be in a better position to energize hybrid working and workspaces, while avoiding the risk of reducing interaction. However, it is vital to equip local managers with the tools they need to orchestrate schedules effectively. Noëlla Gavier, Chief People Officer at Welcome to the Jungle France, highlights the importance of documentation and a culture of asynchronous working:
"At Welcome to the Jungle, training and coaching for managers is aimed at establishing an environment conducive to team progress and performance, while giving them time together but also individually to deal with issues over four days. The challenge lies in providing management methods and structuring meetings to make working time as efficient as possible. The fifth day is explicitly dedicated to rest."
The manager induction process at Welcome to the Jungle is supported by the HR team and a buddy. At the same time, the new manager is provided with extensive documentation on best practices, based on a survey carried out beforehand among the teams.
It's essential to understand the various implications of such a reorganization for teams, partners and customers alike. What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is the organization sustainable? What are the consequences for strategy, culture and people management?
Work also needs to be done on identifying tasks that can be standardized. In a longer working day, it will be necessary to optimize time in order to complete activities while limiting potentially increased stress. How can artificial intelligence help to time specific tasks?
In this way, the culture ofasynchronous working could be developed more easily, as a genuine support for activity and hybrid teams. At the same time, reducing the number of meetings and their duration is an avenue worth considering. Barco and Circle Research carried out a study estimating that the ideal meeting time would be 21 minutes.
But the 4-day work week is actually more complex to implement than that. In fact, ConvictionsRH received numerous requests for assistance in implementing this new organization before the summer of 2023. One year on, no company has finally adopted the model, for economic reasons. In some cases, the entire structure has to be reviewed, particularly in the case of daily invoicing.
However, it is possible to carry out a 4-day experiment before considering a company-wide roll-out. The best practice is to form a representative panel that doesn't just include people who are already convinced. This will make it possible to adjust and convince basic skeptics, who may even become ambassadors for the model, so that management is no longer the only one promoting this transition.
In the end, like hybrid working, there is no single model for the 4-day week. There are as many possibilities as there are companies, so much depends on the culture and the people who bring it to life on a daily basis.
remote work, negotiated with the social partners, has brought its share of benefits, including increased productivity, contradicting the argument of employers initially opposed to it. However, if poorly organized, it can have a negative impact on collaboration, innovation and social cohesion. The 4-day work week will not correct these negative effects; on the contrary, it may amplify them. On the other hand, it could play a crucial role in talent retention, making it a major issue for certain companies.
The question of a 4-day week, like that of remote work, must therefore be discussed in advance with the various bodies involved. The aim is to reach a negotiated collective agreement, with the involvement of social partners and union delegates essential to defining the terms and conditions.
"In terms of social dialogue, we recommend co-construction of the 4-day week model with staff representative bodies," insists Marine Chabot.
Specific points may be raised:
New work organizations are often criticized, especially in their early stages. The remote work has often suffered from its inaccessibility to certain jobs, creating inequalities. With the 4-day working week, these jobs could benefit from this new work organization, depending on negotiations with social partners. It's also interesting to note that 77% of working people in France would be in favor of a 4-day week, according to the February 2024 Baromètre de l'Économie AGPI.
The 4-day work week is entirely feasible in France if certain conditions are met and anticipated. In France, Welcome to the Jungle adopted the model in October 2019 after 5 months of experimentation, and Métropole de Lyon has been testing it since September 2023, with an extension of the scheme even planned for September 2024. By 2022 in the UK, 92% of the 61 organizations that had tested reduced working hours wanted to continue.
There are many ways of applying this system. An extra day off a week could be freed up, but it is also possible to alternate short and long weeks, or why not adapt to seasonality to better meet the needs of the company's activity.
Flexibility remains essential. If the desired result is to make working hours more flexible, other options exist. In particular, an employer can create leave with any title and any method of taking it. It could be "3 days of associative leave per year", or "3 days of leave in the event of the adoption of an animal". Anything is possible, but it's imperative to examine employees' expectations and the effect of these measures first!
Want to find out more about how companies like Welcome to the Jungle use Deskare to organize their hybrid work? Let's talk for 15 minutes!
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