I read recently about three United Kingdom companies that are experimenting with reducing their working week from five days to four, with their employees — 280 employees in all — not losing any pay.
Those companies are communications firm Yo Telecom, video-game developer Hutch and learning and development company MBL Seminars, according to The Guardian.
All companies — hotel firms among them — are experimenting with flexible working conditions and hours. This is because they wanted to offer something new for staff, because employees have asked for it and because the pandemic has changed the way we all think about work-life balance.
At the same pay, though? For fewer hours? And with revenue streams being hammered over the last two years?
The results of these trials will be studied on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In the U.K., both the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, our two greatest centers of learning, along with think tank Autonomy, will participate. In the U.S., Boston College will also join in the employment study.
A campaign group known as 4 Day Week Global will oversee it all.
Such employment programs were first experimented with in Iceland, but there have been other schemes in Spain, New Zealand and other destinations. France introduced a 35-hours-a-week-maximum work week at the turn of the century, and I think they also made it illegal for employers to expect their employees to check emails and other communications outside of those new working hours.
Attempts have been made by all sides to balance work, leisure, happiness, mental health and other things that might make our three score and 10 more meaningful.
I’ve always wondered if the system was such that we all worked four days a week, would we soon thereafter — give it six months — want then to only work three days?
I suppose in the grand scheme of things it was only yesterday we started to work only five days a week. Back in the day before enlightened thought, trade unions and more employee power via their feet and bank accounts, there would only be Sundays off, and everyone was expected to attend church for one half of that one day off.
Hotels are nearly all seven-days-a-week, 24-hours-a-day businesses, so staff are in that token divided where it's needed across every minute of the day.
That means, logically, I suppose, there is no point where hotels cannot drive revenue. That might or might not free up hotel employees more than in other industries.
One major point made in 4 Day Week Global’s May 2021 report “Stop the Clock” is that “shifting to a four-day working week without loss of pay could shrink the U.K.’s carbon footprint by 127 million tonnes per year by 2025.”
Governments across the globe claim they have the desire to reduce greenhouse gases by 2025, 2030 or 2050.
Perhaps there is a way of taking those carbon savings and investing directly into businesses and communities? There are algorithms to do that successfully, and it would help governments fulfill their policies.
There might be additional savings from the health industry, that is, if working less reduces stress, transportation accidents when commuting and other costly incidents.
One hotel that has joined the party is luxury hotel The Landmark London, according to The Financial Times. The hotel offers its chefs four-day-a-week packages at pay comparable to five days.
Chefs work longer hours than most anyway, I think, so I am not sure that means they are working 40 or 35 hours fewer. Some of this corporate largesse might come from the fact that employees, especially restaurant staff, are harder to find than needles in haystacks.
Change of this scale comes very quickly after a long time. People will campaign, lobby, argue and present evidence for years and years with no results, and suddenly everyone clamors to say what a brilliant idea it is.
Every hotel company in the same week seemingly banned single-use plastic, I seem to remember, and some of their green credentials at the time were questioned.
Lastly, there is the change to order.
We are all so used to working five days a week. It is structure for many of us and is all we know. Working fewer days no doubt would be received well, but that extra 24 hours elsewhere will surely result in changes elsewhere.
Consider day care, for example. Would day-care operators charge the same amount for four days as they would for five? Would they need to maintain revenue in the face of staffing and fixed costs? Would clients — that is, staff on reduced working weeks — be willing to pay for the same number of hours when they’re having to look after their children for one-fifth of any formerly contracted time?
This is just the first scenario that came to my mind, and I do not have children. There must be others.
Amid all the noise of needed change, the conversation will be interesting.
Contact Terence Baker at tbaker@hotelnewsnow.com.
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