No Canadian companies involved in a shortened workweek trial intend to go back to a five-day week
If you were looking for more positive signs of improved workplace wellbeing, workers might find it in the latest batch of data from the 4 Day Week Global pilot project, which found that the four-day week has proven pretty successful here in Canada and the United States.
The findings more or less echo what’s been seen in results elsewhere in the world where 4 Day Week Global has been running pilots: increased happiness, better work-life balance and only negligible changes to productivity.
“The overall experience with the four-day week remained highly positive,” the report found. “Revenue increased by 15 per cent over the course of the trial, weighted in accordance with company size. Employees seriously considering leaving their jobs fell significantly, with 32 per cent saying they were now less likely to leave.”
So successful, in fact, that none of the Canadian companies trialed plan on going back to a five-day week. One of the Canadian companies participating was Sensei Labs, whose chief experience officer Tara Vanderloo told BNN Bloomberg that the company was “excited to keep the four-day week in place beyond the pilot, and our teams remain deeply committed to the practice and preserving our productivity metrics.”
What will be interesting to watch is what happens next with the four-day week. This is probably the fifth or sixth significant batch of data showing support for, and success with, the four-day workweek. It remains a small ― albeit high-profile ― pilot project, but some workplace experts in Canada are cheering the results, saying it shows how significant a boost it could be.
“The evidence is in ― shorter working weeks lead to happier and healthier employees, and the organizations that they work for are better positioned to attract and retain talent,” said Joe O’Connor of the Toronto-based Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence. “There’s a real and significant opportunity for ambitious, imaginative leaders to be at the forefront of this change and differentiate themselves from the competition.”
Content written by Kieran Delamont for Worklife, a partnership between Ahria Consulting and London Inc. To view this content in newsletter form, click here.