The four-day workweek – or the reduction of working time in any of its variants – is setting a trend: in some countries, as a “let’s see how it goes” pilot program, and in others, as an aspiration mixed with an imposition – such as that of the Spanish Ministry of Labor, which wants to reduce the overall number of hours without consulting employers.
Source: Aceprensa
Among those in the first group, those who have decided to experiment without forcing, there is currently a singular objective: that of the Tokyo Metropolitan Authority, which from April 2025 will introduce a four-day week for administrative workers with the aim of seeing if the new variant contributes to… encouraging the birth rate.
The shortening of the work week is intended to ensure that Tokyo women “do not have to sacrifice their careers due to vital milestones such as childbirth or child rearing.”
The issue is critical: knowing the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, Japan’s rate of 1.2, coupled with its small population of immigrant origin (2%, compared to 15% in Spain and similar in the U.S.), is simply alarming. In Tokyo it is even worse: the fertility rate in 2023 was just 0.99 children per woman.
To move the needle upwards, this four-day formula will be applied, whose implementation is preceded by some mechanisms that the capital’s administration has been incorporating, such as the possibility for its employees to reasonably adjust their work schedules to their needs, and to take a day off every month. Now, that day off will be every week, so that each “weekend” will have 72 hours.
The authorities have pledged to continue to review the system as soon as it is implemented, to make adjustments to benefit flexibility and especially to give women a hand so that “they do not have to sacrifice their careers because of vital milestones such as childbirth or child rearing.” In fact, already the municipal government allows some of its staff to work fewer hours per day if they have young children to care for.
Good data in Germany
Although the focus on the program’s potential impact on the birth rate is the novelty of the Tokyo experiment, it must be said that initiatives of this kind are becoming increasingly common in several developed countries and have, in various cases, been adopted on a permanent basis. In 2022, a similar experiment in the United Kingdom with more than 60 companies yielded promising results – reduced sick leave and resignations, reduced burnout and stress among employees, stabilized productivity, etc. – and more than 90% of organizations were encouraged to continue with this variant.
One of the most recent programs, the results of which were published earlier this year, has been tracked by a team from the University of Münster, Germany. The researchers, in an approach to the general situation, recall that in the country there is a notable shortage of skilled workers, which is felt mainly in construction, the technology sector, medicine and child care, to which is added a rise in absenteeism and absenteeism related to mental health. For these absences alone, the economic losses are estimated to exceed 207 billion euros per year. “Consequently,” they explain, ”organizations are increasingly recognizing the need to improve working conditions to retain and attract employees, while maintaining productivity.”
One mechanism in that direction would therefore be to shorten the working week to four days. In the German team’s experiment, 45 companies or organizations of different types participated, and each one did it in its own way: some reduced the daily working time, others gave a day off, and of the latter, some charged those lost hours to the other four days, while others opted not to make up that time.
34% of the German organizations participating in the pilot program decided to extend it, partly because of its attractiveness for recruiting new talent.
Employers’ stated intentions ranged from increasing the attractiveness of the company to achieving a higher level of employee job satisfaction and contributing to their health, sense of well-being and work-life balance. And, of course, to increase – or at least not reduce – productivity.
At the end of the pilot program, the results were mostly positive. The companies – just 12 of them submitted their balance sheets – did not see their income levels affected, which, all things considered, was already a gain: the fact that, with less working time, income and profits remained unchanged showed that the hours taken off were not decisive, or that employees had managed to get their work done more quickly, for the sake of a longer rest. Thirty-four percent of the organizations decided to extend the time of the pilot program, since it had also served as a bait to recruit new talent.
Regarding the staff, 90% reported a greater sense of well-being during the implementation of the initiative, and there was a slight reduction in the number of medical leaves. “Compared to the control group – they point out – participants took more steps per week (1,848 more), were more physically active (24.45 minutes more) and slept 38 minutes more.” The smartwatches that were given to some of the workers tracked each worker’s daily biological cycle and provided that data.
Finally, the need for more “relationship” time, the time that employees wanted to spend with friends and, above all, with their families, was significantly reduced: while 64% of employees expressed this desire before the study, the percentage dropped to 49 points when the program was fully implemented. In subsequent interviews, half of those surveyed said they were already satisfied to have this added time.
If in Germany the experience went well and being freer to enjoy or care for the family – perhaps even to extend it – is appreciated, a reduction in the hours or number of working days can be even more positive in Japan, precisely the place where the term karoshi has arisen: the death of the worker from the stress caused by the requirement to be almost “24/7” on the lookout for work.
Although the concept is automatically associated with suicides – some employees have taken their own lives after working 140 hours of overtime in a month – the Japanese Ministry of Labor also designates deaths due to cardiovascular failure as such if the person has worked 100 or more hours of overtime in the period mentioned.
The fact that anyone is allowed to work more than 100 hours of overtime says a lot about how bad the work-life balance has been in the Asian country. According to data from the OECD’s Better Life Index, Japanese workers spend one hour less than the OECD average (14.1 vs. 15 hours) on personal care activities, such as eating and sleeping, and leisure activities (socializing with friends and family, pursuing hobbies, watching TV, etc.).
Certainly, a shorter working week -or, failing that, shorter working days- could help to convince those who are thinking of jumping from a skyscraper to leave it for another day. But there is a long way to go from there to giving oneself up to the task of parenthood, especially given the costs and the lack of government support.
According to the OECD’s own index, Japanese public spending on childcare and preschool services is the fourth lowest among the countries in that group. Perhaps this level of spending helps to explain why enrollment of children under three years of age in Japan is 30%, three points below the average for the bloc.
To make matters worse, young married couples do not have an easy time finding a roof over their heads: at the end of 2023, Reuters reported on a UBS report on real estate in cities like Tokyo and noted that, paradoxically, the investment boom in the country “has made apartments in central Tokyo unaffordable for young Japanese professionals”. In the first half of last year alone, average prices for a home in the capital’s center had climbed 60% to $865,000. “ For residents, rising prices have made Tokyo the second most expensive city in the world, behind only Hong Kong,” the British agency noted.
Perhaps, if initiatives such as the one in Tokyo become widespread and if workers learn that their future working life will not necessarily involve giving up their last breath at the altar of the company, they may change their mindset.