Can Singapore companies make a four-day week work? Here’s why it’s worth trying

YUP, WE’RE still discussing the four-day work week.

This week, the topic has found its way back into discourse thanks to a release of findings from a six-month UK trial involving some 60 companies and more than 3,000 employees – the world’s largest-scale one yet.

According to non-profit 4 Day Week Global, 91 per cent of the participating companies said that they definitely would or were planning to continue with a four-day work week after reaping benefits in the form of revenue gains, for instance, as well as drops in turnover rates and worker burnout.

Four-day work weeks have also been attempted or are being trialled in other European countries, Australia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates, and many are reporting positive results too.

Could we dream of this becoming a thing in Singapore next?

But of course, old habits die hard

As with many things workplace-wise, drastic changes like this somehow just aren’t as straightforward as we might like here in Singapore.

It was only in 2004 that our civil service moved fully onto a five-day work week; in some industries it continues to be the norm to have five-and-a-half or even six-day work weeks in place for their employees.

And I mean, we’ve gone through a global pandemic and many Singaporean employers remain unable to wrap their heads around the concept of not forcing their employees to show up at the office for the sake of it – these may faint at even the slightest suggestion of cutting down the number of hours worked for the same pay.

Yes, Singaporeans want a four-day week!

And just in case anyone was wondering, it’s a resounding yes – we do want to work four-day work weeks.

Research firm Milieu polled 1,000 Singaporean workers, of whom 81 per cent said that they wanted a four-day work week – 37 per cent said they really wanted it.

Here’s a bulleted list of some of the benefits:

• More time for personal matters
• Increased efficiency and productivity (although statistics and studies from other countries may not necessarily translate here, to be fair)
• Saves money and time spent on commuting (although work-from-home policies can also achieve this), or on business expenses if offices are closed on a fixed day for all
• Promotes greater mental health and wellbeing, reducing levels of burnout
• Makes the company more attractive to talent seeking these flexible arrangements
• Improved employee retention

But will Singaporean companies get on board?

At the same time, 55 per cent of those surveyed said that they didn’t think their companies would be ready to make the switch.

It’s easy to see why – Singaporeans, and by extension Singaporean firms, would generally be risk-averse and conservative, and almost always adopt wait-and-see approaches with regard to big policy changes as far as possible.

Especially where money is concerned, and here, it can be a gamble in a few ways:

• The change may not translate to a sufficiently-large increase in productivity, necessitating higher costs in taking on more head count to make up the shortfall
• Either that, or output quality may fall – since the same work has to be done in a shorter time
• Overtime spent by employees may increase, and/or projects may get delayed – leading to negative impact on customer satisfaction

Speaking of money, the likely question on many bosses’ minds is: why am I being made to pay my employees the same amount for fewer hours worked?

So the execution of a four-day work week here may involve employers shaving their staff’s pay or other benefits like leave days, or extending their work hours on the remaining days to make up for the shortfall of the fifth missing day – probably not what 4-Day Week Global has in mind.

There is a response that aims to address this question: the “100-80-100” model that’s being advocated by HR professionals in the UK.

That would be: workers retain 100 per cent of their pay, work 80 per cent of the existing work time, but maintain 100 per cent of their original productivity.

And multiple cases have been made to show that this is workable – but in Singapore, the jury’s still out since not enough companies have implemented this or tracked and shared their findings. 

Perhaps this just isn’t meant to be a universal policy

Perhaps one thing that could help make this happen quicker here is to recognise that there are some industries where a four-day work week simply isn’t workable without drastically increasing manpower overheads.

Examples of these include customer service, logistics, public transport, aviation, security, healthcare and any others that require round-the-clock provision of services.

Beyond this, it’s also been pointed out that the concept of a four-day work week may need to cascade downward to education, where schools could consider four-day study weeks – which actually is what Raffles Institution has been doing for the past two years.

Even though I may speak with the bias of an employee, I still think a four-day work week is worth trying out – especially for outcome-focused industries like tech, communications, manufacturing, architecture, medicine and many more.

Even if that means I might wind up writing overnight and/or over the weekend to meet my deadlines.