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From the Experts: How to Shorten the Workweek to Improve Key Metrics
In this week’s episode of America Back to Work, S2Verify co-founder and chief strategy officer, Arnette Heintze, sat down with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Shorter: Work Better, Smarter and Less–Here’s How.
Pang studies people, technologies, and the worlds they make. Shorter explores the global movement to shorten working hours and how companies in a variety of industries are moving to a four-day workweek or six-hour days while improving productivity and profitability. Through his company Strategy and Rest, Pang speaks and works around the world with companies who want to apply these insights in their organizations.
He received a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a lecturer or visiting scholar at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Oxford University, and Microsoft Research Cambridge.
In his conversation with Heintze, Pang explains the double-bind of technology as it relates to a shortened work week.
“We are arguing that technological changes in business processes have made us efficient enough so that it is now possible to do five days’ worth of work in four,” says Pang. “Those same technologies, however, have also created more distraction in the office or more overhead. If you can attack those things, the four-day week becomes quite feasible.”
He sees a four-day workweek as an effective strategy for combating turnover and improving retention—a topic we covered on the blog earlier this week.
To prove his point, he references a shocking case study in which a healthcare organization with 100% turnover a year for nurses reduced turnover to nearly 20% a year by implementing a four-day workweek. According to Pang, with a shortened workweek, employers can enjoy “systematic savings” due to this reduction in turnover and “the costs associated with recruitment, hiring, and onboarding.”
Pang believes that a four-day workweek is possible for all organizations—despite their unique industry challenges and “unique rhythms” (as he calls it).
“Even if you start out very skeptical, this is something that can work in your industry,” he says.
He urges all organizations to try it because “companies generally spend next to nothing on implementation of these programs”—and the upside for employees is so great.
Get more insights into whether a four-day workweek is right for your organization. Click here to listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.