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0:00
Hello everyone. My name
is John Hopkins and I'm
an Associate Professor
of Management from
Swinburne University of
Technology in Melbourne,
Australia, and it's
my pleasure to
join you here today to
share some findings with
you from a research project
I was involved in, in
early 2023, entitled
"Emerging 4-Day Work Week
Trends from Australia",
which discusses new insights
based on interviews with
Australian firms who have
already adopted 4-day
work week arrangements.
0:34
This is part of the "Future
Work Now" series of
Henry Stewart Talks
and I'll begin
by giving you a brief
overview of the research,
some background context, discuss
the methods we use, and the
motivations behind the study.
Then, I'll discuss some of
the key findings
before finishing with
some final thoughts
and predictions
about the future of
the 4-day work week.
0:59
The first notion of
a 4-day work week can be
traced back as far as 1908,
when the Ford Motor
Company first began
offering its
employees a five-day
40-hour workweek,
which was considered
revolutionary at the time.
Prior to that, the standard
work week was six days.
In the decades that followed,
various companies
and labor unions
around the world
began advocating for
shorter work weeks with
the goal of improving
work-life balance and
reducing the risk of burnout.
The idea of a 4-day work week
started to gain mainstream
attention in the 1970s,
when the oil crisis forced
some companies to implement
reduced work schedules as an
attempt to conserve energy.
50 years later, the idea is
now gaining significant
global attention again.
With a growing number of
organizations experimenting
with the 4-day work week as
a means of boosting
productivity,
reducing stress, and improving
work-life balance for employees.
The catalyst for this
resurgence of interest in
the 4-day work week is
the sudden increase in
demand for more flexible
work arrangements
in the wake of the
COVID-19 pandemic.
This talk investigates
4-day work week trends
in Australia and
discusses findings from
a series of interviews
we conducted with
10 firms who have
already adopted these
work arrangements.
