In Spain, the Valencian Community took an innovative step towards the work routine in September last year, announcing a project for companies in the region in 2022 with a workload reduced to just four days. Some predicted the success of the initiative, however, a study by the University of Valencia shows that the implementation of this idea will be, to say the least, difficult.
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Study at the University of Valencia
The reduction in working days, in the current business context of many self-employed people, is complicated, but not impossible. According to the aforementioned research, small companies are considered the main barriers to carrying out this project, as well as a rejection by the employers and the fear of the unions that this rule could generate a precariousness of the jobs.
This study carried out interviews to seek to understand the thinking of the various stakeholders who, however much they think the interesting long-term idea, they need to address other issues first, such as flexibility of schedules.
loss of productivity
The main argument of employers is that labor productivity would be reduced. According to this group, with a lower workload, income would also fall and, consequently, companies would be less competitive.
Stress and precariousness
However, the union believes that this change may lead to greater pressure on employees and result in salary reduction, bringing negative aspects in several personal sectors to the employee and also to the company. However, the idea defended is that wages are not reduced.
intermediate steps
Thus, with the difficulty of acceptance by unions and employers, the study suggests that some intermediate steps are carried out first, so that there is a facilitation in the implementation of these measurements. Among them are facilitating the work with the incorporation of technologies and the flexibility of the workload, for example.
Even so, it is possible to perceive that these practices become more viable in some branches of work, and not everyone, making this implementation even more difficult due to characteristics of its market model. work. Thus, the report points out that technology companies tend to be more effective with this work model reduced to 32 hours a week.
Sweden and Iceland
Similar tests have already been carried out in Sweden in 2015 and in Iceland in 2015 and 2019. In Sweden, the test was carried out with employees of nursing homes, who reduced their workload from 8 hours a day to 6 hours, which showed satisfactory results. However, there were also criticisms and, in the end, the workload returned to 8 hours a day.
In Iceland, the weekly workload was reduced to 35-36 hours without salary reduction and they obtained positive results, maintaining productivity and improving the mental health of employees.
growing trend
In this way, it is possible to perceive that there is an adherence in search of reducing the weekly workload and increasing the flexibility of schedules, even though there are people who think otherwise. In Europe, 30 companies in the United Kingdom have spoken out claiming that they will test this model together with the universities of Cambridge and Oxford.
With that, we have Scotland that has been testing this model for a few months, and also Germany, which has some companies reducing the working hours of their employees in a different way, but optimizing this thought. Therefore, other countries in the rest of the world, such as New Zealand and Japan, are still trying to apply similar models.
