The start of the month of March marks the launch of SA’s four-day week pilot. About 30 companies from across the country will participate in a six-month experiment where employees will work just four days a week yet deliver the same tasks, services and products for their organisations.
The SA pilot includes organisations in the public and private sectors and those driven by both profit and a social purpose. However, there is an underrepresentation of the largest organisations, a bias towards knowledge workers and the more educated strata of society. Future pilots, of which there will certainly be some, will need to explore how to test such innovations with a wider range of employees in the SA economy.
These organisations are high-performing companies and in highly-competitive sectors. As in all competitive sectors, the competition is based on the service and product offered to clients, but also the recruitment and retention of talent. Offering a challenging high-performance workplace combined with working patterns that respect people’s private lives is an exciting and competitive employer proposition in today’s world.