(Lyon) “Dare the four-day week!” “, proclaims not a happy employee but a boss, Laurent de la Clergerie, cantor of a new organization of work favoring “the quality of life”.
Inspired by a Microsoft experience in Japan, the founding president of the digital commerce group LDLC – a thousand employees – took the plunge in early 2021, adopting 32 hours over four days, without a reduction in salary.
The 52-year-old entrepreneur details all the benefits in a recent book Dare the Four-Day Week!
“This work organization is the future,” he said in an interview with AFP. “When I see how everything is going today in the box, how much I have changed people’s lives, who work more efficiently while being much less stressed, and having removed the notions of mental load, burnout , etc., I say to myself “if the atmosphere that there is at home multiplied in many clubs, overall, it is society with a capital S that would change!” “, he ignites.
Initially, shareholders “didn’t like it at all.” Investors tell him, “We didn’t know you were left! “. Now, “it’s not a negative topic anymore,” he says.
Some employees are also reluctant: they fear impossible agendas, unattainable goals… Others tell him: “Not for me Laurent, I like my job too much”.
He is determined to hire to compensate and tells them, “to reassure them”.
“It was only after I realized that finally we were working better, that there was actually no need to recruit. Because we change the way of life. And that changes everything.”
The transition is “smooth” and he quickly sees “the magic happen” with more rested, productive, creative employees: even though turnover jumped 40% in the year, working time fell by 8 .6% and the workforce increased by less than 4%. The absence rate goes from 6% in 2019 to just over 5% in 2021.
“I only had good surprises,” he says. Except on one point: “there is no staff turnover at all”, which hampers prospects for progression, creating “frustration”.
Employees “nevertheless do not want to leave”, won over by the time saved in private life, doubled by savings in transport or childcare.
Another downside: LDLC has reduced the number of teleworking days from two to one, to maintain social ties and cohesion.
“It may have made people cringe a little, but the three trade unions have signed,” said CSE secretary Patrick Lusson.
“Overall, employees are satisfied with the 32 hours over 4 days; no one wants to go back, even if some young people arriving on the labor market would like to work more to earn more, ”adds the elected CFDT.
The 4-day week, tested in just a handful of companies, is the dream of a majority of French people: 9 out of 10 working people would be tempted to join a company offering 4 days and 56% of working people place it in the top 3 of benefits they would most like to benefit from, according to a recent Yougov survey of a sample of 1,010 active talent for Talent.com.
Has the population lost the sense of “work value”?
“We confuse work value with ability!” retorts Laurent de la Clergerie, who points to the densification of work in recent decades, often mentioned by economists and sociologists.
“A century ago, we ran one project a year, today we manage ten at a time, in constant competition, a phone transplanted to your arm, emails every three seconds, 25 Whatsapp groups and social networks . We are not able to maintain efficiency in the face of this amount of data. Our brain no longer follows. Whereas with an extra day off, you work better.”
The four-day week works if it is a reduction in working time accompanied by a change of organization to increase productivity, explains to AFP Pedro Gomes, professor of economics at Birkbeck (University of London), author of the book Friday is the new Saturday and coordinator of a pilot project in Portugal.
More rested workers work better on other days, they are more creative. This frees up time for innovation, we don’t just think about work.
But that is not enough to make up for the loss of a day. The four-day week implies a change in the organization of work to be more productive.
The frequency and duration of meetings should be shortened. Sometimes it’s about adopting technology. A restaurant chain in Madrid has implemented the four-day week without hiring staff: customers order through an app to save the waiter time. Also very popular, the creation of blocks of time to separate teamwork, personal work, checking emails, social moments…
These changes are easier to make when switching to four days because employees know that the benefit will also be for them. A business leader told me that the change to four days had been his best exercise in cohesion.
The four-day week also reduces costs: the energy bill if you close on Friday, the rate of absenteeism because workers are less often sick. In all projects, stress and exhaustion decreased significantly.
It is a solution to recruitment problems. At a UK bank, applications increased by 500%. It is an alternative to salary increases and a way for SMEs to compete with larger companies with higher salaries.
This involves 39 voluntary private sector companies, mostly SMEs. A six-month project is reassuring, it allows you to share experiences…
Three key principles have been defined. First, no pay cut, it’s not part-time. Second, a reduction in the number of hours worked is not a compressed work week. In Portugal, the week is 40 hours, the reduction can be 32, 34 or 36 hours. We leave the decision to the company. Third, it is voluntary and reversible. It’s not a law or a workers’ right, it’s a managerial practice, and if it doesn’t work, we go back.
Our most important decision was not to give a grant in order to do a good evaluation. If we give money, even if successful, a skeptic will always attribute it to the grant.
No economic law says that we have to work six, five or four days, it is a choice of society between working time and leisure time.
The five-day week movement gained momentum when American Henry Ford implemented it in all his factories in 1926. He believed that workers would not need a car if they spent six days locked up in its factories.
The five days corresponded to the mass consumer economy of the 20th century. But over the past 30 years, everything has changed: technology, communication speed, demographics, women’s work… and we continue to organize work in the same way. There is also a cultural shift in work-life balance after COVID-19, especially among young people.
The criticisms in the 1930s were the same as today against the four days: it’s impractical, wages will go down, everyone will get lazy… Interestingly, these criticisms soon died out after the implementation of the five days.
