Hey boss, can I have 52 days off?
The post-pandemic battle over the future of work has been heated. In one corner you have work-from-home (“WFH”) evangelists and in the other, return-to-the-office traditionalists. Each side is Kantian in their thinking. The fate of commercial real estate hangs in the balance.
The war is being fought, like this:
Though it’s really a sliding scale (below), and is flush with options and flexibility:
Hybrid work seemed to be the obvious middle ground, but many talking heads (are we one of those?) are doubtful that hybrid structures will persist once COVID worries fully disappear. Then, as if to intentionally stir the pot yet again, a report emerged (read it here) detailing a resoundingly positive response to the largest pilot ever conducted for a 4-day work week (with no reduction in pay). The report covered 33 companies and almost 1000 employees in the US, Australia, Ireland, UK, New Zealand, and Canada that switched to a 32-hour work week for a 6-month period. Some of its high-level findings are below:
Instead of finding a reduction in performance, it showed an 8% increase (based on revenue)
67% lower burnout, lower fatigue, increased physical health reported by employees
Despite shorter week, no reported increase in workload
96.9% of employee participants wished to continue, with 25 companies interested in or committed to continuing
More anecdotal findings - lower stress, work-family conflicts declined, improved mental health, more satisfactory work-life balance
Now don’t get us wrong, we’re not picking a side here. Don’t shoot the messenger.
The 5-day, 40-hour work week traces its origins back to the late 1800s and early 1900s (a great piece about its bloody rise to prominence can be found here) primarily for railroad workers and factory workers. It’s suggested that Henry Ford (one of the earliest implementers of the 40-hour work week) only implemented the program to better cater to the demands of the middle class, which were his target customers at the time. It wasn’t built for the modern day, with all of our connectivity, technology and labour laws.
With that in mind, we think the increasing prominence of innovations around the modern workweek (including the supporting technology thereof) is exciting. Flexibility is great. What if you take it one step further and pick your own weekends? Maybe they don’t need to be in a clump that bookends a Saturday or a Sunday? Maybe an 8-on, 6-off like oil workers, engineers, and construction workers have been doing for decades? Maybe something more customized, like Dupont, or emergency service and medical workers’ schedules? Get creative.
What if we thought about it multi-dimensionally (below) - where would your ideal structure sit? Note how the 4-day work week is still way over to the right:
Obviously (and perhaps, most importantly) these are not one-size-fits-all solutions. All modifications to the 9-to-5 should be seen as extra tools in a tool kit. You can apply them in whichever form is necessary to satisfy the needs of your business, your customers, and your employees. It’ll be a challenge to build legislation and worker protections around it, but it might be worth it.
Without the pressure of everyone doing things on weekends, various peaks are flattened out - energy grids, traffic, and wait times at most types of businesses or restaurants. It’s essentially built-in peak shaving. And the benefits for employees are numerous. Extra time for family, mental and physical health, aboveboard side hustles, and errands. Not to mention, a boom in the vacation rental industry (have you rental owners checked out Hostfully yet?).
So, how would this affect commercial real estate? Perhaps more days off can be horse traded for more time in the office? Perhaps it could act as a stop-gap for those considering a hybrid work approach. It’s at least an interesting middle ground for our combatants and it certainly builds on the notion of enhancing workplace flexibility as championed by our friends at Desana who just raised a successful Series A.
The five-day, 9-to-5 workweek has had a good run, but COVID may turn out to be the beginning of the end for its rigidity. The traditional work week was designed for 1930s factories… It’s not inappropriate to at least question its relevance for many of today’s businesses. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle so let’s be open to a better way to work (whatever that happens to be).
From your friends at GroundBreak Ventures
(please note, all diagrams were constructed in Excalidraw)