Would you prefer a four-day work week? If you asked this question to most employees, you’re likely to hear a resounding ‘yes’—but what if you asked this same question to business owners and organizations themselves? For a long time, the idea of the four-day work week has been nothing more than that—an idea. Yet, in recent years, heads of organizations, political leaders, including California congressman Mark Takano, and employees across the globe have begun to take the concept seriously.
Trials have taken place across Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and, more recently, the UK, to see whether the four-day work week could offer a solution to many challenges facing the workforce, including stress and burnout, which have a detrimental impact on business. So in what ways are employee wellbeing and business success linked? Is a four-day work week good for business?
Prof. Yi-Ren Wang, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, along with other b-school experts, shared her thoughts with BusinessBecause recently: “Four-day work weeks could enhance people’s productivity as it gives staff an opportunity to think more carefully about how to achieve the same amount of work with less time.
It may shift people’s mindsets from working hard in terms of long hours to working smart in terms of fewer hours,” says Yi-Ren Wang, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Asia School of Business.
“Working smart is ultimately good for businesses’ financial outcomes, when more outputs are delivered with less time and cost. By cutting unnecessarily long work meetings and creating a culture of delivering information in the most concise way, businesses may be able to produce the same level of work, if not possibly more, within a shorter time frame.”
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This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.