Companies exploring the option of letting employees work four days a week hope to reduce job burnout and retain talent seeking a better work-life balance, according to the chief executive of an organization that promotes the idea. The trend is gaining traction in Australia and Europe, says Dale Whelehan, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, which coaches companies through the month-long process of shortening their employees’ work hours. Japan launched a campaign in August encouraging employers to trim work schedules to four days. American companies haven’t adopted four-day weeks as broadly, but that could change. Nearly a third of U.S. CEOs polled by accounting firm KPMG in 2024 said they are exploring alternative work schedules such as a four-day or four and a half-day workweek. The Associated Press spoke with Whelehan about the reasons why companies might want to consider the change. His comments have been edited for length and clarity. Q: Why should organizations switch to a four-day workweek? A: The bigger question is, why shouldn’t they? There’s a lot of evidence to suggest we need to do something fundamentally different in the way we work. We have issues of burnout. We have a recruitment and retention crisis in many industries. We have increased stress within our workforce. leading to health issues, issues with work-life balance, work-family conflict. We have people sitting in cars for long periods, contributing to a climate crisis. We have certain parts of the population that are able to work longer hours and therefore be rewarded for that, creating further inequity within our societies. Lastly, we look at the implications that stress actually has on long-term health. We know that it’s linked to issues like cardiovascular disease, to cancer, to diabetes. So stress is something not to be taken lightly, and it’s only rising in our world of work. Q: Why is the 40-hour workweek so common? To understand where we are now, let’s take a step back into pre-industrial times. My granddad was a farmer, worked seven days a week and was required on-site all the time. It was a lot of long hours, but also he had a lot of autonomy. By the time my dad entered the workforce, he was a technician in a mechanical role. And he was expected to produce products on a large scale. As a result he wasn’t given the rewards from farming, but was given a salary. That change from my grandfather’s time to my dad’s brought about the birth of a discipline known as management. And management, led by Frederick Taylor, was looking at the relationship between fatigue and performance. A lot of scientific studies were done to try to understand that relationship, leading to the need for a five-day week as opposed to a six-day week. By the time I entered into the workforce, we no longer had a very physical, laborious workforce. It’s highly cognitive and highly emotional. The fundamental physiological difference is that our brain as a muscle can’t withstand the same level of hours of work as our muscles in our body might be able to. So it’s that mismatch between an outdated work structure of 40 hours, rooted in very physical labor, and what is now a highly cognitive workforce. Q: How can companies increase revenue while employees work fewer hours? A: The […]