Employers beware: The Spanish siesta might just find its way into your office.
The ability to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic has changed the way many employees think about their jobs. It’s changed their expectations, too. Eight-hour workdays that lack schedule flexibility just won’t cut it for a lot of people from now on. Workers got a taste of freedom, and they want more of it.
Aziz Hasan, the chief executive of a New York-based crowdfunding company, plans to accommodate these pandemic-induced lifestyle changes by offering employees a permanent three-day weekend. Hasan’s 90 workers will only be expected to work four days for no less pay, according to the Wall Street Journal, which he hopes will foster a healthy work-life balance that will lead to more productivity and creativity than before.
Hasan admitted he isn’t sure this new schedule will work out the way he hopes, but he thinks it’s worth a shot.
“You can’t learn until you start doing it,” he said. “People are curious what it will look like and if it will work.”
As appealing as a shorter workweek might sound, it’s unlikely to become an American norm. Not everyone is guaranteed an annual salary, and those paid hourly might not want the extra day off because it would mean losing money. Moreover, Americans have always emphasized work in a way that many other cultures have not. Long hours and rare vacations are just part of the territory in many industries, and an attempt to change that wouldn’t be seen as a move toward a healthier work-life balance, but as a symptom of laziness.
Take, for example, Alter Agents, a market-research consulting firm that tried a four-day workweek last summer to help employees navigate the pandemic smoothly. The schedule lasted only 10 weeks, in large part because the employees who volunteered to work on their extra day off began to butt heads with those who didn’t.
“It was more stressful to not be at that meeting or take the day off for some employees,” Alter’s CEO Rebecca Brooks told the Wall Street Journal. “It led to resentment among some employees. It frayed the team culture.”
There are, however, reasonable changes that many employers are already starting to adopt: Flexible work hours and the ability to work from home when necessary are becoming commonplace in offices across the country. And as long as productivity doesn’t let up, there’s no reason to believe these perks won’t become permanent.
And even if productivity does drop a bit, Americans will probably find a way to get more done than Europeans.
