A four-day compressed week is nothing new

There has been a bit in the news this week about the four-day week. The newspapers have been trailing the idea that Labour is going to give full-time workers the right to request a four-day work week. It looks very much like what was traditionally referred to as a compressed week.

So not the same as the 4-Day Week campaign, which has been piloting four-day weeks which are about working more efficiently and about promoting wellbeing. The campaign is a response to growing burnout on the back of more intense working weeks where we are being pinged on several different platforms all day long. It is not about cramming five days work into four.

Yet the four-day week campaign and the compressed week are being conflated. Workers already have the right to ask for compressed hours under flexible working regulations and many have over the last year. Employers can reject their request doesn’t fit with business interests. So what is new about what Labour is proposing? It’s hard to tell, but apparently it will be an ‘enhanced’ right. Since April flexible working rules have been in force from day one in a new job rather than six months in. There was talk before the elections of a default right to flexible working ie the employer has to justify why a job can’t be done flexibly. We’ll have to wait and see what the smallprint says.

But giving people more options in how they work will help many. One particular form of flexible working might make life more stressful for some, but help others. I know people who do a compressed week and it saves on a day’s childcare and so relieves financial stress. Others fine cramming five days into four exhausting and end up checking emails on their day off or starting the week to a host of requests. It will depend on many factors, including the nature of the job. Some jobs have lighter days at the end of the week, for instance, so working Monday to Thursday means you cover the most intensive parts of the week. There are no hard and fast rules, but offering people more choice is helpful to reduce the risk of burnout on all fronts.

Anti-flex bias

Some in the news – and business generally – just seem absolutely opposed to any change. Probably because the current system is working for them. Despite supposedly being in communication – which you would think entails good listening skills – they can’t see that it doesn’t work for many. Yesterday the Centre for the Cities, a supposedly independent think tank, put out a poll saying young workers are returning to their London offices more than older ones. Fair enough and the report does recognise some positives to remote working, but its chief executive, Andrew Carter, is reported to have commented: “The standard narrative is young workers are shirkers, but actually [they] are back in the office and it’s the middle or more experienced workers that tend to be less in the office.”

The implication is that people working remotely are skiving and lazy. It’s the same old stuff we have been hearing for so many years, certainly ever since I started working at workingmums.co.uk back in the 2000s. Some remote workers may skive, of course, just as some office workers do. But a lot of the research shows the exact opposite and that is certainly my experience. It’s not a minor point because it holds back so many people who can’t work five days in the office [at least not without at some point throwing in the towel and pivoting to self-employment or a less well paid job nearer home]. It makes no Earthly sense to squander their potential when it is absolutely not necessary. Much more attention needs to be focused on breaking out of traditional mindsets and looking at practical ways to make work work for everyone.

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