Suzanne Harrington: Four-day work week benefits everyone - from small kids to big bosses
Picture: Denis Scannell
Astonishingly, results back from the four-day-week work trials in Ireland have come in with a 100% approval rating from workers. Who’d have thought? Who’d have imagined that Irish people would respond so positively to such an idea? That instead of turning up for work on day five, having already given it your full energy during the previous four days, you stay home and enjoy your life, your family, your hobbies, your projects, and your community?
Kidding. It’s only dinosaurs like Elon Musk who still rate presenteeism as a viable work strategy; the rest of us know better.
The cult of presenteeism has been ruining workers’ lives since the Industrial Revolution. We have long been brainwashed with the idea that those who work savage hours are to be emulated, admired, held up as some kind of Stakhanovite ideal, albeit at a desk rather than down a mine. That being the first in and last out at work is something to aspire to, something that somehow makes you superior. Perhaps even morally.
And then the pandemic changed all that, proving — as if we didn’t know already — that there are many ways to work that do not involve being in a work building five days a week, praying for 5pm on Fridays and being bathed in existential dread from 5pm onwards on Sundays.
Working from home — previously regarded as a three-word term for skiving — became legitimised. Add to this the climate crisis, which has made using less resources our greatest imperative, so that the idea of turning the lights off in the workplace on a Friday is not just good for us as individuals, but good for our future survival as a species.
And yet we have not just embraced but promoted the culture of burn-out for so long that to step back from it feels almost transgressive; women in particular have seen their careers stymied, getting stuck with the low paid stuff if they require workplace flexibility, while their male equivalents forge ahead, pressured to fling themselves on the hamster-wheel of presenteeism and workaholism.
Finally we are seeing the stupidity of this. Seeing that kids need caring from both parents equally, rather than mum being the frazzled one and dad being someone who pops his head around the door at bedtime. This old-fashioned way of doing things benefits nobody — from small children to big bosses. Happy workers feel valued and appreciated; happy workers stay in their jobs.
So yippee for this extremely positive, intelligent leap forward, that will benefit all involved. Let it become the norm. And let us remember what happened to the real Alexey Stakhanov — he developed a raging drink problem, and was stripped of all his glory after a vodka brawl. In Animal Farm, represented by Boxer the horse (“I will just work harder”) he ended up in the glue factory.
