We all may have hated working on Fridays For a long time now but the four day Work week is actually catching on ey Once estimated that 40 percent of U.S Companies have either started using a Four day work week or have considered it Researchers from Boston College University College Dublin and Cambridge University have studied the impact of The four-day Work Week here are just Some of their findings two-thirds of Workers said they were less burned out And overall workers said they were more Productive and more satisfied with their Work plus workers mental and physical Health improved they slept better Exercised more and they took fewer sick Days workers ended up spending more time With their families and most said they'd Have to be paid way way more to switch Back to a traditional five-day work week Because of these benefits some say a Four day work week could be the answer To the great resignation meanwhile Others have pushed back suggesting that A four day work week is too Progressive And bad for business that workers today Are just kind of lazy whiners not only Is this idea kind of insulting to Workers it's also quantifiably incorrect Labor productivity how economists Measure how much work workers get done Has risen and risen and risen since the 1970s meanwhile workers wages have not
Kept up plus as my colleague Kathleen Davis points out the five-day work week Is a relatively new invention in 1926 Ford Motor Company he became one of the First major companies to adopt a Five-day 40-hour work week and it wasn't Until 1940 that Congress set 40 hours as The standard hell Dolly Parton's nine to Five didn't come out until 1980 but even Back then leaders knew that over time Technology was going to cut down on the Hours that workers needed to work in Fact in 1929 John Maynard Keynes the Daddy of modern macroeconomics predicted That technology would bring the work Week down to just 15 hours by 2029 and In 1965 some members of the Senate Predicted that Americans would only be Working 14-hour weeks by the year 2000 And while we're obviously not there the Pandemic has demonstrated that it is Possible for us to reimagine how we work And to use technology to be more Flexible and more productive of course Every team is different so maybe it's Not that all orgs need to take on a Four-day work week maybe it's that we Shouldn't be surprised when they do Thanks for watching this week's episode Of fast news be sure to like And Subscribe [Music] Foreign
