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Careers
Most women believe they’d be more productive if they had a 4-day working week
By Ellen Scott
2 years ago
2 min read
The push for a four-day working week continues to pick up steam.
Could you get more done at work if your hours were condensed? The evidence is stacking up to say yes.
Trials of a four-day working week in the UK saw no drop in productivity – and in some cases, even a rise – and research suggests that people get more done when their hours are reduced. Now, a poll from Glassdoor backs up this idea, finding that the majority of workers believe they would be more productive if their company implemented a four-day work week.
Of the 12,000 people surveyed, 81% said they would do better at work if they had a three-day weekend. Women were more likely to believe this – 88% of female respondents said they would be more productive on a four-day week, versus 75% of men.
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The research doesn’t dig into why this might be, but one factor may be time inequality. Women continue to pick up the majority of domestic work, whether that’s childcare or the admin of keeping the home in order. This means that as a result, women tend to have less genuinely ‘free’ time than men – so of course we’d be keen on an additional day off work to claw back some of the hours to use as we please.
Women also make up the majority of the part-time workforce (often due to childcare responsibilities, again), so have firsthand experience of how much they can get done in less time. They’ll know that they don’t need five days to complete all their work, because they’ve already proved they can do it all in four (or fewer).
It’s clear, though, that despite so many women knowing they’d be just as productive – if not more – by working fewer days, lots of people need to be convinced before the four-day week really becomes a mainstream concept.
The Glassdoor research found a real difference between industries when it came to asking workers if they thought a four-day work week could go ahead. In the healthcare industry, for example, 93% of professionals believed they would be more productive working four days a week, whereas in the world of legal, accounting, and finance, this number dropped quite a bit – 27% of people in the legal industry actively said they would not be more productive if they worked fewer days.
Meanwhile, there are campaign groups trying to stop the four-day work week push in its tracks. Right-wing lobby group The Taxpayers’ Alliance described the four-day week as giving workers a “holiday”, an attitude that still hangs around despite all the evidence showing the benefits of these sorts of flexible working arrangements.
In short, while many workers reckon we should embrace the four-day week, there are still bosses who are firmly against it. We’ll have to hold tight and wait for more proof to stack up in our favour.
Images: Getty
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