Sandra Moran, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at WorkForce Software, explores the growing popularity of the four-day work week and its potential benefits for both employees and employers. She highlights a successful pilot program in EMEA, where 92% of companies opted to continue the practice, resulting in increased revenue and reduced turnover.
She emphasises the need for a mindset shift in redefining units of work, breaking away from traditional structures to empower employees with technology and flexibility. Moran addresses sector-specific challenges, suggesting that each industry should question long-held assumptions and seek creative solutions to implement a customised four-day approach, while still being able to navigate evolving scheduling and compliance challenges.
Finally, she underscores the role of technology, including digitisation, automation, machine learning and analytics, in facilitating the transition to a four-day work week while ensuring compliance and productivity.
“As we’ve already seen in many other areas of business, automation can condense and speed up manual workflows, allowing employees to spend time on higher-value work. For example, optimal shift patterns and assignments can be generated with the help of scheduling apps and demand forecasting algorithms. The subsequent visibility into workload trends also aids managers in planning condensed or varied staff schedules,” Moran says.
She continues, “Furthermore, advanced analytics help businesses optimise staffing, schedules, and workload distribution for different individual work patterns while still optimising overall output. Data can reveal the workflows most suitable for automation versus those still needing human oversight.”