The impacts that the hospitality industry can face adopting a four-day work week.
Companies worldwide have been implementing the four-day workweek, either in the form of a test to evaluate the results or definitively. This new format could include the hospitality industry. However, if there is one less day of work, it could be that we gain an extra day of leisure and entertainment. Would that mean another busy day for hospitality workers? How much of this new work format would impact the industry?
In the general scenario, the consequences will be affected individually and collectively. The countries that have tested this format claim the result of the same performance and yield, if not better, in their workers. As workers, they felt more productive on working days and with a better quality of life and dedication to social and family life. The collective consequences can be new rush hours, for example, or less CO2 emissions from cars and public transport.
In the hospitality scenario, several possible impacts may occur positively or negatively. One of the biggest concerns of hospital workers is that having a day less at work can mean an extra day of a heavier and busy shift like those on weekends.
This can occur depending on the form the management or business owner adopts. In one hypothesis, if the four working days were chosen, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, there would be a great risk of pushing the team too much. Since Friday was chosen not to work, we would have one more day on the weekend. This would be a good fuel to make Friday a leisure day since Friday afternoon/evening, as the beginning of the weekend, is already rooted in our culture.
However, if the venue's option is to work the four days from Wednesday to Saturday, then we would have the option of having the day off on Sunday, as is already the case. But it would be off for everyone.
If a weekday is reduced for the hospitality sector, it doesn't mean the venue would make less money. We have anecdotally noticed long before this idea came into force that by reducing from 7 days a week to 5 days a week of operation, revenue has not decreased substantially, if at all. In addition, it has improved the mental health and performance of employees. The same is expected for the reduction to 4 days of operation.
Another important point to be highlighted as a consequence, even more for this most critical period of work shortage, would be alleviating this stress. Fewer days of operation increases the chance of needing less workforce. The famous North American restaurant Chick-fil-A can attest to this. After announcing their decision to do a three-day workweek at the Miami store, they received more than 420 applicants for the open positions.
According to Lindsey, the owner of Miami's Chick-fil-A, choosing fewer working days a week impacted operations. In his interview with CBS News, he explained that service speeds dropped during the afternoon and cafeterias were full because, in the rotation of shifts, second-shift workers were always trying to count the registers and do everything the entering operation left by the previous shift. It took a while for things to get back on track and flow. Then the flow of the operation oscillated. With the longest shift in fewer days, employees are already getting into a good rhythm.?
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Lindsey also reported some secondary benefits and the different teams competing with each other on things such as inspections and service time. Because of this, they've been “literally perfect” in every food safety inspection.
Whatever the change made to adapt to this new work format, we cannot exclude mental health care and a healthy environment for the team. Even though this new format already aims at that, it is necessary to create a more careful look so that the longer shifts don't exhaust the team too much.
It is also important to remember that these changes would affect full-time workers more. But regardless of that, we need to ensure that this one less day of work is for all workers in all sectors. Otherwise, the workload and the emotional and physical stress of those who work serving and caring for others would be even more burdensome.
Hospitality needs a positive way forward, and in that, we need to think of new and innovative ways to recruit, train and retain the best quality talent for our industry.
Could the 4-day workweek be one method to get talent back into our industry?
Written by Bruna Kao and Shaun de Vries from Open Pantry Consulting and 42-Days