“Three hours of work each day and in shifts or a fifteen-hour week”: in 1930, in the midst of an economic and social crisis, John Maynard Keynes imagined in his Letter to our grandchildren a future where mechanization and the advances of capitalism would make it possible to “dedicate our still available energies to non-economic goals”. His horizon? The year 2030. As the deadline approaches, it is clear: we are still far from the fifteen-hour week. But the debate around the four-day week is more topical than ever.
In France, several companies have already taken the plunge. Laurent de la Clergerie, president and founder of the computer hardware company LDLC, had been thinking about it since 2019. He has since written a book touting his new model, capable of “changing society” according to him. And for good reason, the more than 1,000 employees of his company approved the decision at 99%, and the group has gained in efficiency. “The number of packages shipped increased by 5%” despite the drop to 32 hours of work per week, he rejoices today. Because behind the question of the pace of work is also that of productivity. A study by the Sapiens Institute, in coordination with ISEOR (Institut de Socio-Economie des Entreprises et des Organisations), estimated that employee absenteeism would cost nearly 107 billion euros each year, two-thirds of which are attributable to lack of supervision.
At Love Radius, a specialist in physiological baby carriers, a hybrid system is required for the 18 employees. For five years, from May to August, Fridays have been free. “The model was put in place naturally with the bridges of the month of May”, recalls Olivier Sales, co-founder. The objectives are set for one or two weeks, “but with a tangible benefit every six days: on Friday morning, we are at home.” Love Radius, however, remains flexible and does not prohibit teleworking either if employees lack time during the week.
The health crisis as an accelerator
The question relates as much to the time spent as to the content of the working day. “Many employees already have too high a pace of work. How to operate a transition to four days, especially in companies already overloaded?” Asks Fabienne Autier, teacher-researcher in strategic management of human resources and organization at the emlyon.
“We find strong similarities with the discourse of twenty years ago concerning the 35-hour week. However, this has not fundamentally changed the relationship to work in France, if at all”, tempers the researcher. The reform, promoted by the Jospin government at the end of the 1990s, is regularly criticized, with full-time workers declaring that they work 39.8 hours on average, according to a study by the Institut Montaigne in February 2023.
This time, the health crisis has clearly turned the professional organization system upside down, with the notable emergence of teleworking. “Covid-19 has saved us ten years in terms of mindset. Many companies have realized that we could operate differently. This opens the door to other ways of working”, underlines Isabelle Rey-millet, business transformation coach and professor of management at ESSEC. These new practices have also inspired Ténor, a group of 130 employees, which works on the digital transformation of companies. Set up at the start of 2022, the four-day week is today “carved in stone”, underlines its president Nizar Alachbili. The new model was already planned for 2025-2026, but “the Covid was an accelerator. The curfew measures were very stressful for everyone. We had ten resignations in the summer of 2021”, recalls the manager. However, he claims a “pragmatic response to difficulties”, and maintains that the model does not lend itself to all companies.
“Tracking unnecessary time”
“It’s a question of state of mind”, insists Isabelle Rey-Millet. There must be a certain autonomy of the employees and mutual trust between the collaborators. The other important point is to track down unnecessary time, anything that is not productive”, like untimely meetings that take up “10 to 25 hours a week for an executive”. Welcome to the jungle, a company specializing in recruitment, has decided to “cut back on informal meetings and waste of time”, explains Noëlla Gavier, director of human resources.The 320 employees have been experimenting with the four-day week since 2019. After six months of test “supervised by a consulting firm and neuroscientists to assess happiness at work”, the approval was 90%. Today, the model is embedded in the culture of the company and has “boosted the productivity of collaborators. It’s a very methodical operation that leaves no room for the unexpected”, specifies Noëlla Gavier.
Also affected by this change in the relationship to work, the founders of Mozoo, a digital creative agency, took the plunge in 2020. “As we work with annual objectives, we have offered our employees to adjust their working time to continue to fulfill their missions”, says Jules Minvielle, co-founder of the company. The answer is unanimous, the 47 employees of Mozoo support the new organization. “For the moment, these are six-month test phases which are linked, we could technically go back, but I strongly doubt that we will do it, all the indicators being green. The agency defends a global vision of work and transparency in the supervision of tasks, also enabled by better organization, shorter breaks and slightly longer days.
In the current context of reform of the pension system, which provides for the extension of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years, the four-day week has something to seduce. Two out of three French people are in favor of it, according to a cluster survey17 for Point. “It is a means of attracting and retaining employees for companies. It also makes it possible to put forward an argument of purchasing power in the current inflationary context and for companies which are not in a position to increase salaries. “, emphasizes Fabienne Autier.
International lobbying
What if artificial intelligence became the trigger Keynes was waiting for in 1930? Christopher Pissarides, Nobel Prize winner in economics in 2010, assured it very recently at a conference in Glasgow: “We could easily switch to a four-day week” thanks to the technological revolution. Despite the 300 million jobs threatened by this technology, a report by the American bank Goldman Sachs claims that global GDP could grow by 7% thanks to AI. However, “we do not yet observe, from a practical point of view, the impact of artificial intelligence on productivity gains”, notes Salima Benhamou, economist at France Strategy and specialist in questions related to the future. work. Technology could take over repetitive and monotonous questions, and leave tasks that require social interactions, or those that are too complex, to humans. “This can facilitate the transition to four days, but companies will not go through it thanks to artificial intelligence. It is above all a tool, used to improve processes and the quality of work”, she underlines .
If it is for the moment still too early to publish a statistical study on the subject, the four-day week continues to spread. “There is a surprising enthusiasm for the subject, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries”, notes Fabienne Autier. A real lobbying campaign is being organized in the United States, Canada and England, and the academic world is on the offensive on the subject. This is particularly the case in the United Kingdom, with the 4 Day Week Globala non-profit association, or even the think tank Autonomy. A full-scale test was organized in 2022 across the Channel. The result is clear: 56 of the 61 participating companies have adopted the new system after six months of testing.