Sandra Moran, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at WorkForce Software, explores the growing popularity of the four-day work week and its potential benefits for both employees and employers. She highlights a successful pilot program in EMEA, where 92% of companies opted to continue the practice, resulting in increased revenue and reduced turnover.
She emphasizes the need for a mindset shift in redefining units of work, breaking away from traditional structures to empower employees with technology and flexibility. Moran addresses sector-specific challenges, suggesting that each industry should question long-held assumptions and seek creative solutions to implement a customized four-day approach, whilst still being able to navigate evolving rostering and compliance challenges.
Finally, she underscores the role of technology, including digitization, automation, machine learning, and analytics, in facilitating the transition to a four-day work week whilst ensuring compliance and productivity.
“As we’ve already seen in many other areas of business, automation can condense and speed up manual workflows, allowing employees to spend time on higher-value work. For example, optimal shift patterns and assignments can be generated with the help of rostering apps and demand forecasting algorithms. The subsequent visibility into workload trends also aids managers in planning condensed or varied staff rosters,” Moran says.
She continues, “Furthermore, advanced analytics help businesses optimize staffing, rosters, and workload distribution for different individual work patterns whilst still optimizing overall output. Data can reveal the workflows most suitable for automation versus those still needing human oversight.”
