It took a pandemic to make a Melbourne company rethink something that has been the norm in Australia since 1948: the five-day working week.
“We’re doing it because people are saying to us after the last two years: ‘I’ve rethought what I’m valuing in life. I’ve spent extra time with my partner and with the kids’,” Mr Moriarty says.of a shorter working week in Iceland in 2015 and 2017, in which many workers moved from a 40-hour week to a 35 or 36-hour week without a reduction in pay. Productivity remained the same across most trial workplaces but employee wellbeing increased, with a reduction in stress and burnout.
“This will be a failed experiment if people end up working longer hours on the days they work,” the company says in a staff survey.