Just a few short weeks after a trial of the same nature got underway in the United Kingdom, more than a dozen businesses in Australia and New Zealand are planning to take part in a trial of a four-day working week.
This week, thousands of workers in the UK at 70 different companies joined the test programme.
During the trial programme that will take place in Australia for the next six months and start in August, employees at 20 different companies will work one day fewer per week without experiencing a reduction in their income.
Workers that receive 100 percent of their salary despite working just 80 percent of their typical week are still able to maintain 100 percent of their output.
This is the trade-off for receiving 100 percent of their income. Companies from Australia and New Zealand, ranging from a health and wellbeing organisation to a marketing and communications agency, will be taking part in the competition.
“Our Community has been a traditional office-based company and, with what we have learned in the past two years, we are now in a position to implement changes, trust employees to maintain productivity and make sure work-life balance is supported,” CEO Denis Moriarty told 7NEWS.
“Most of all, we are responding to the shift we are seeing with employees having more of a voice about what they want work to look like in the future.
“Companies cannot grow, achieve social impact or reach amazing valuations and new heights without their staff.
“It’s time we as leaders find ways to return some of this investment to them, not just in wages, bonuses and equity, but with time, so they can use the rest of those things to build a life they love.”
In recent years, in a number of nations, there has been a rise in the number of people advocating for a reduction in the length of the working week.
During the epidemic, millions of people resorted to working from home, which reduced the burdensome time and costs associated with commuting.
As a result, calls for greater flexibility have only gotten louder.
According to the 4 Day Week Campaign, official trials that will be supported by governments will take place in Spain and Scotland later this year.
The effect that the new work pattern will have on employee health and happiness, as well as levels of productivity, gender equality, and environmental impact, will be studied by researchers.