[INTRO]
There's a place where nearly the entire country no longer has to work five days a week.
After a two year experiment, they've proved that working less means more gets done.
But the fight for fewer hours doesn't begin here. It starts on the other side of the world,
in Australia.
This plaque at the University of Melbourne shows just how long Australia has been
at the forefront of better working conditions.
In the 1850s, stone masons went on strike here, demanding their hours be reduced to 8 a day.
Before that, people worked up to 14 hours a day.
The stonemasons who built this building won, and that victory has been recognised internationally
as among the first to cut hours. Importantly, pay wasn't reduced.
Parades were held for years.
[NEWS REEL] Five thousand workers parade through Sydney.
Colourful floats move through packed streets.
It took a few more decades before an 8 hour day became law, and then a 40 hour week.
That's been the standard for a long time, but now
some businesses are deciding it's time to take the next step.
We're going to see Dr Amantha Imber, the founder of a consultancy called Inventium.
[DOOR OPENS] - Hello, come on in. - Hello, thank you.
When the pandemic hit, like so many, her nine employees started working from home.
But more than that, they also dropped to four days a week, still at full pay.
- We saw that stress levels reduced by 18 percent, and this is in the middle
of lockdowns and a global pandemic, so that was pretty remarkable.
and we also found that productivity increased by 26 percent.
- She says the key to that is fewer emails and fewer meetings.
- We definitely prioritise deep work, whereas, you know, most people working in knowledge work
will spend their days dipping in and out of the inbox for example, so instead most of the team will
spend the first hour or two of every day doing deep focused work on whatever their most important project is.
- I think it's a great idea, both economically and socially.
A four day work week would lead to higher productivity and better efficiency.
For workers they'll be better rested, they'll have more concentration for their jobs.
It will also allow them to get a better balance between their paid work
and their family responsibilities and their leisure time.
Sasha D'arcy joined Inventium at the start of the year, and is bucking that trend.
- Having this extra day, that's really my me time.
It's sort of like this little secret. Everyone else is at work and I get this time to just
go and do yoga, or go for a hike, or even just spend some time resting.
- She says being able to focus more on the things that keep her healthy
has meant she's taken far fewer sick days.
- I actually have an autoimmune disease, and it means that I get sick quite often.
This year, six months of working four days a week I have had one sick day all year.
- Experts say employees who are happier work harder, and smart employers will offer them flexibility
that works for both parties.
- You know since the dawn of capitalism, business owners have always said
"I cannot afford to treat the workers any better or I will go out of business".
And it's simply not true. We have managed to reduce working hours, we have managed
to increase wages over history, we have managed to provide other protections and entitlements for workers.
And despite all those things, business profits in Australia today
are higher as a share of our GDP than they have ever been in history.
- There you go - Thank you
If you think it sounds a bit far fetched, there's one country where the entire workforce
is about to be given the option of a four day week.
Iceland has just wrapped up a four year trial, and it was an overwhelming success.
Two thousand five hundred workers across the country dropped from 40 hours to 35 hours a week.
Productivity stayed the same or got better, and the workers loved it.
Now almost all of Iceland's workforce has either already moved, or has the right to move,
to a shorter work week with the same pay.
That's great, but Scandinavians are always good at that sort of stuff,
so how would it work here, at a construction site or a hairdresser or a real estate agent?
So a four day working week, would that work in real estate?
- Potentially in the property management department, which is the leasing of properties,
we could run four day weeks, but in sales, highly unlikely. - Why's that?
- A lot of the vendors who employ us to sell their homes, they expect their representative to be available 24/7.
- It's even more problematic in industries with shift work, like health care or manufacturing,
or retail where you have to have people physically there to open the shop.
- If you're speaking to retail, for example, it would be a tricky conversation
because they're there to meet the needs of their customers,
and they have a very different relationship with their workers than say someone who's in the professional services
who may be able to negotiate a four day working week quite successfully.
This is a pretty broad national conversation that would need to happen with a lot of different sectors involved.
We'd be needing to talk to workers, we'd be needing to talk to small businesses, large businesses.
It's a huge national conversation before an experiment like something that happened in Iceland could happen.
- But it's a national conversation that we should have, because work is taking over our lives.
The reality is many of us are working very long hours. Last year 18 percent of men and eight percent of women in Australia
worked between 45 and 59 hours a week,
and eight percent of men and nearly three percent of women worked more than 60 hours a week.
COVID has changed the way we do our jobs, with more people than ever working from home.
On the upside, that's encouraged a more fair split of household chores.
A four day work week could take this even further.
- I think that can have a really great impact for women who we know are searching out
and are really hungry for flexible working but I think also for gender equality.
We’ve got to think of that as something that’s available for men as well. So I think making flexible working available
particularly for Dads is really critical for building gender equality in the labour market.
Having a four day week evens out the system, not only for men and women, but across the workforce.
It means part time workers can have more hours, while full time workers can have a better work/life balance.
Changing something that is such a fundamental part of our society isn’t easy.
But Iceland is proving that it's possible.
150 years after the stonemasons brought on the 40 hour week, maybe that could be a thing of the past.