Results of the world’s largest trial of the four-day work week are in, and a majority of supervisors and employees liked it so much that they’ve decided to keep the arrangement. In fact, 15% of the employees who participated in the trial — detailed here by The Washington Post — said “no amount of money” would convince them to go back to working five days a week.
Last week, MDM posted a poll on our Independent Distributors LinkedIn group and on our LinkedIn page asking distribution executives if they thought a four-day workweek could ever be feasible for the wholesale distribution sector.
The distribution industry is often considered to be an old-school business that is reluctant to change, though that narrative has started to change recently, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. The industry has come to embrace its digital transformation over the past decade. Distributors also may have surprised themselves with how quickly they were able to pivot to remote work and adjust amid supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bearing those recent changes to the industry in mind, it may come as less of a shock that, of 156 total voters on MDM’s LinkedIn polls, 63% said they think a four-day workweek is possible in distribution.
An important distinction to make in the distribution industry is that a four-day workweek doesn’t necessarily mean shutting down all operations for an extra day each week. Shifts could be staggered such that a business can still operate five days a week.
“A 4-day work week does not mean you cannot be open as many days as you want,” Engineered Laundry Products President Michael Burk explained in the comment section of the MDM poll. “Rotating employees’ days off is one way to be open 5 days unless you are working with a bare minimum staff.”
The trial detailed by The Washington Post took place in the U.K. and included 61 companies, 56 of which said they would continue to implement four-day work weeks after the pilot ended. The trial is part of a series of programs coordinated by advocacy group 4 Day Week Global; companies that have participated in the programs have reported increased revenue, reduced absenteeism and resignations, and overall improved employee well-being. Skeptics of the policy, on the other hand, believe shortening the work week will result in employees’ productivity decreasing in the long run.
While the response to 4 Day Week Global’s programs has been largely positive, research on the policy has been limited to small-scale experiments involving mostly small businesses: 66% of the companies that took part in the U.K. trial had 25 employees or fewer. Of the 61 companies participating in the U.K. trial, 7% were in the manufacturing industry, 4% were in construction/housing and 2% were in engineering. As such, there isn’t yet much data on how manufacturers and distributors might handle a four-day workweek; however, a shortened workweek has previously been suggested as a solution for manufacturing and distribution employees with tasks that are difficult to complete remotely.
A paradigm shift like shortening the workweek might seem drastic because most of us haven’t experienced such a change in our lifetimes. One of the first companies on record to implement the five-day, 40-hour work week was Ford Motor Companies in 1926; during this time, it wasn’t uncommon for employees in the U.S. to work six-day weeks. In 1940, the Fair Labor Standards Act went into effect, limiting the workweek to 40 hours, which has been the norm ever since. 4 Day Work Week argues we’re long overdue for an update.
So, we’ll pose the question again, but in a slightly different fashion? Do you think a four-day workweek could be effective in distribution? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments.
