Hong Kong (CNN Business) A growing number of smaller companies are adopting a four-day workweek. Now the results of a recent trial at Microsoft (MSFT) suggest it could work even for the biggest businesses.
The company introduced a program this summer in Japan called the "Work Life Choice Challenge," which shut down its offices every Friday in August and gave all employees an extra day off each week.
compared to the same period the previous year, the company said in a The results were promising: While the amount of time spent at work was cut dramatically, productivity — measured by sales per employee — went up by almost 40%compared to the same period the previous year, the company said in a statemen t last week.
In addition to reducing working hours, managers urged staff to cut down on the time they spent in meetings and responding to emails.
They suggested that meetings should last no longer than 30 minutes. Employees were also encouraged to cut down on meetings altogether by using an online messaging app (Microsoft's, of course).
orangefreshy on March 17th, 2021 at 19:20 UTC »
Japanese work culture in general tends to be very very focused on how long you’re at work to the point where people basically just sit around doing nothing but since they’re present it looks like they’re very dedicated. It’s absurd.
I’ve really noticed that most of the bosses that have this rule where butts need to be in seats x amount of time or are against 4 day weeks, WFH etc are really old school and also terrible managers, they usually have nothing else to do besides make sure you’re on task so to save their own jobs they need to implement these kinds of rules. So instead of having managers or directors that are strategists or high level thinkers what they have are babysitters.
IcanCwhatUsay on March 17th, 2021 at 18:40 UTC »
Is it 4/10s or 4/8s?
Trevorjrt6 on March 17th, 2021 at 16:42 UTC »
Did they keep it going?