Will Your Weekends Be Getting Longer? Or Shorter?
Mahmoud Ahmed Abdelaziz, Credit Analyst,Linked in influencer
Top 1% Linkedin Voice |Credit Risk Officer & Credit Admin| 4 Years of Banking Experience | #Operation Risk #Analyst, Credit Control | Fintech | #Career expert | LinkedIn #hiring #bank #egypt |+44000 followers
The Scoop
It’s a tough time for talent. College graduates can’t find jobs . Companies continue to push for return to office . And, rising from the ash heap of industrial history, the six-day workweek is now rearing its ancient head.
A Resume Builder survey of 800 companies this spring found one in 10 plans to institute a six-day workweek in 2025. And at least one company and one country have decided they can’t wait until next year.
Oddly, this move comes at the exact moment that generative AI is poised to usher in an era of four-day workweeks.
The good news? In the long run, the four-day workweek seems likely to win out, given its impressive start.
The companies, academics, and governments that have done studies on the four-day workweek have almost universally found it makes employees more productive. (Increased productivity, of course, is exactly what automaker Henry Ford had in mind when he famously rolled out a 40-hour workweek back in 1926.)
Now, a year after 61 companies in the United Kingdom raised their hands to participate in a pilot study of the four-day workweek, 89% of those organizations have decided to keep the shorter workweek and 51% have made it a permanent fixture. Those companies report happier employees, lower attrition, and increased efficiency.
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To ensure that organizations adopting a shorter workweek maintain their productivity, they should:
? Tap into employees. No one better knows where time is squandered and which processes should be automated — put that AI to work.
? Cut meeting bloat. A Microsoft study in 2023 found that meetings on Teams had increased 3x — 3x! — since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. The study identified inefficient meetings and too many meetings as the top two drains on office productivity.
? Set clear, visible goals. Atlassian’s State of Teams 2024 report says teams with clear goals are 20% more likely to be productive. The report also stresses the importance of identifying and celebrating small milestones on the way to big achievements.
Obviously, not every business leader agrees that the future holds a four-day workweek. Notably, Jamie Dimon , the CEO at JPMorgan Chase, sees the workweek . . . shrinking to 3 1/2 days .
Enjoy the long weekends! Better days are ahead.