The 4 days a week scam
Everyone is excited - A new study from Iceland shows that nothing stands in the way of the longed-for 4-day week. But what do we do with the free time we've gained? The promise behind the four-day week reveals the real dilemma of the working world.
At the moment the 4-day week study from Iceland the round in the media:
- Die Zeit: "The four-day week could also work in Germany".
- Der Spiegel: "Field experiment on the four-day week - Iceland cuts working hours, productivity rises".
- t3n: "4-day week in Iceland: 5 facts critics must come to terms with".
- Focus: "Soon the four-day week? Iceland drastically reduces working hours - experiment shows resounding success".
- WiWo: "4-day week makes employees more productive and happier".
- SRF: "Iceland switches to the four-day week".
The unanimous verdict: a four-day workweek is better, for people and the economy. The online newspaper Perspective Daily asks in its article (https://perspective-daily.de/article/1762/TsKtvxjo) on the topic: Would the 4-day week be a good solution for you? There are three answers to choose from - Yes, No, I already work four days. The first option currently gets seventy-four, the second six, and the third eighteen percent of the votes cast. I belong to the absolute minority who voted "No." This is because I consider the experiment that has been carried out to be a fraud against the workers.
The big 4 days a week scam
Many of the digitizers in the business world make this, quite crude, announcement to their customers at the beginning of the project: "One thing must be clear to them, if they have a crappy process today and they digitize it, they simply have a crappy digital process." I feel the same way about the glorification of a reduced work week. After all, if we glorify the shortening of poor working conditions, nothing has changed in the circumstances. As the study from Iceland points out, this is true. Because in essence, the reduction in working hours achieved above all that people can better endure their unsatisfactory work. This is achieved by giving them more time to compensate for their frustration.
The author of the study, Jack Kellam, says in an interview with Time: "The subjects were able to decide for themselves the amount of time they now had to work less. It doesn't matter if someone sits in front of the computer and gambles or goes for a walk in the woods during that time." What makes people happy, according to Kellam, is self-determination. He underscores this by saying, "What's most important is that participants had a high degree of autonomy in how they managed their work time."
What it is really about
The study offers a reduction in the working week as a solution. But a closer look reveals something else. People lack self-efficacy in their work. We want to have an influence. We want to help shape things. We want to let thirteen be even. The way most companies are organized today prevents the vast majority of employees from doing just that. And in a systematized way. That's why it takes more than just improving the existing structures. We are ready for a system change. We need an adaptive organizational design that professionalizes independent design by employees. Conventional organizational structures are hardly adapted to these requirements. Formal command-and-control structures thwart the ability of people to self-manage and adapt to changing economic, technological and market conditions.
If one's own organization is to become adaptive, this therefore challenges traditional management habits above all. For success, it is necessary to leave the silos. And more. No one can continue to rely on predefined plans. Because by the time they come to fruition, a different solution has long been needed. In this mixed situation, the key is to allow autonomy. But only that which ultimately acts in the interests of the organization. This is achieved through three central mechanisms of action:
- Distributing leadership tasks/responsibilities throughout the company instead of limiting them to formal roles.
- Transition from management to self-management
- Transfer to cross-functional autonomous teams
It's not about how long someone works
In companies that consistently follow this path, it turns out that for many, the 4-day week or even shorter working hours with full wage compensation are not an issue. It's not at all about how long someone works. What matters is what effect he/she achieves with his/her work. Incidentally, this applies just as much to entrepreneurs as it does to their employees. For example, the owners of Teledata IT-Lösungen GmbH, Peter Wassmuth and Robin Aigner, who successfully follow this path with their company, regularly emphasize: "One of our greatest successes is that we no longer have a fifty or sixty-hour week, but can manage wonderfully with thirty to forty." On kununu, one employee's reaction to the adaptive working conditions at Teledata reads like this: "Just nice to have Sundays to look forward to Mondays" (https://www.kununu.com/de/teledata-it-loesungen/bewertung/2a55268d-9e4f-44cf-8359-0c1268b96bbd).
And so I ask. "Should we really continue to cheat ourselves with four-day weeks as a promise of salvation when it is within our creative power to work together in a meaningful way?" I know: "We can do better!"
To the author:
Gebhard Borck is the transformation catalyst. With his tried-and-tested thinking tools, he solves concrete, urgent problems. And Borck is more than a consultant: Instead of building castles in the air, he uncovers and speaks plainly. He is a speaker, best-selling author, sparring partner and is regarded as the inventor of genuine fairness in business. https://www.gebhardborck.de
Book tip: Gebhard Bock: The Self-Efficacious Organization. The playbook for intelligent collaboration. 1st edition BusinessVillage 2020, 296 pages, ISBN 978-3-86980-486-6.
