“Eight Days a Week,” sang The Beatles, to express the amount of affection they had for their lady love. Was this a mathematical error? No, the standard seven days simply was “not enough to show I care.”  

Today, there’s a new refrain gaining steam in the business world — but rather than adding days into the week, companies and workers are thinking about removing them. The idea of a four-day workweek is making news today. Regardless of its ultimate trajectory, one thing is for sure — the standard five days is under scrutiny.  

“Is the Four-Day Workweek Finally Within Our Grasp?” The New York Times poses this question in its “latest DealBook special report on trends that will shape the coming decades.” This article likens the concept to the approach to the overall increased flexibility many office workers have gained during the pandemic. First came working from home. Is the four-day workweek far off?  

Some companies have gone this route already. The online retailer Primary adopted this schedule to help protect its staff from COVID-induced burnout. The firm simply lopped off one day, namely Friday, from the usual workweek — no overtime or pay cut required. While employees at many companies have left in droves during this challenging time, most at this business have stayed put. What’s more, some staff members still voluntarily choose to work on Friday at times. In December 2021, six months after this experiment began, Primary locked in the four-day workweek. For how long? “Indefinitely.”  

A Historical Perspective

A radical idea came to fruition in 1938. That’s when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act. This law laid the groundwork for the minimum wage, overtime, and — ta-da! — the five-day workweek.  

Some years later, the notion of the four-day workweek began surfacing. In 1956, Vice President Nixon gave a speech in which he posited that the four-day workweek would arise in the “not too distant future.” During the oil crisis in 1977, President Jimmy Carter said he “may urge industries to go on a four-day work week” to cut energy use. A year later, The Washington Post featured an article on “Pushing for a Shorter Work Week.” It noted that “Ever since the beginning of the 1970s, the 4-day work week has seemed to be just around the corner, but this time it looks for real.”       

So, what happened? The New York Times offers some reasons why the movement stalled. It puts them into several buckets, leading with the nation’s economic travails for the subsequent 20 years. Corporate priorities is another factors, as are “globalization and the diminishing power of labor.” That’s quite a heavy load. Ergo sticking with the status quo ruled the day.  

Moving to the present time, momentum has returned. So have grassroots activities on the legislative front. In 2021, Representative Mark Takano submitted a bill to decrease the workweek from 40 to 32 hours. It’s backed by 13 colleagues.  

Back to the Future

COVID-19 landed in a big way during the first quarter of 2020. It disrupted life and work as we know it. How could businesses manage through the pandemic? They strategized and acted. Wherever and whenever possible, they designed work-from home-provisions. As the crisis permutated and prolonged, employers focused on a wide range of additional ways to keep going in troubled times. Some eyes pored over pilots of four-day workweeks to draw upon these experiences. The nation of Iceland is a case in point. 

An early adopter, Iceland started down this path in 2015 at the behest of trade union and civil rights organizations. Two trials ultimately involved 2,500 workers; that equated to more than 1% of the workforce. But that was just the beginning. “Going public: Iceland’s journey to a shorter working week” explains the progress of the initiative in full. The intent was manifold. It aimed to help workers without sacrificing pay. At the same time, it sought to benefit businesses. 

The findings?  

• Success! “Transformative” and “positive” describe the effects on employees and businesses. 
• Productivity and service levels remained the same OR improved across most workplaces. 
• Workers’ well-being increased, with many moving from stress and burnout to health and work-life balance. They specifically mentioned experiencing less stress at home and more time for family and friends, oneself, chores, and domestic activities. The advantages extended beyond just people whose workweeks shortened. 

Yet, challenges cropped up. It became more difficult to program group activities, such as education and training. Handing off information to coworkers was more complex, too. However, the major pluses won out. As such, the abbreviated schedule became permanent and expanded widely. Today, about 86% of the workforce adheres to a compressed workweek.  

The final report by the government analyzes the results. It ends with forward-looking insight. “The Icelandic trials can play a flagship role in showing how working time reduction should be considered a powerful, desirable, and viable policy across contemporary advanced economies.” And that is exactly what is happening. 

A Breakthrough Whose Time Has Come?

News of the four-day workweek started bubbling up during 2021. But from the looks of it — or rather the search of it — 2022 may be the bellwether year. In only a short time, the messaging and tone of posts strengthened. 

A sampling of headlines shows this crescendo effect.  

We start with the last quarter of 2021:  

• A podcast on “Nice work week, if you can get it” traces developments in the workweek in the U.S. It opens with a brief case study of Philadelphia-based software firm Wildbit, which is a pioneer and advocate of the four-day workweek.  
• Forbes proclaims “Interest and Excitement about the Adoption of a Four-Day Workweek Is Picking up Speed.” This piece tells the story of 4-Day Week Global, a nonprofit that helped launch a program and seeks to build on that success on a large-scale basis. It includes companies and countries on the four-day workweek track. 

The tempo accelerated with the dawn of 2022.  

• In an article about two companies that announced four-day workweeks, Forbes opines “This May be the Tipping Point for Businesses to Join the Growing Movement.” The entities featured are Panasonic and Bolt.  
• “Tipping point” comes up again in “After the shift to remote work, new hope for four-day workweek. “ This piece in Computerworld reports that pandemic-induced changes are “prompting new talk that a four-day workweek makes more sense.” 
• “Every Company Doing a Four-Day Work Week” shows this trend by the numbers. It provides short profiles of 62 businesses in this space, including Kickstarter, Shake Shack, Shopify and Toshiba.  
• Here the headline says it all: “The four-day workweek could be coming to your office sooner than you think.” And a sidebar pinpoints the pace: “It will not be long before the four-day week begins to canter rather than creep.” 

Both Sides Now: Tradeoffs and Points of Interest

Discussion and implementation of the four-day workweek occupies the limelight. But is it a good thing? How far can it go? Let’s peek at the issues being raised.   

“If the same results can be achieved in fewer days, why keep a five-day workweek?” muses Investopedia. Its post on “The Impact of Working a 4-Day Week” notes that Japan has promoted this idea as a national policy. If employees and firms derive value via “increased sales, decreased worker burnout, and lower turnover,” why not endorse it? Those are among the pluses, but there are minuses too.  

One to consider is the long-term effect. The new workweek may yield benefits early on, but they may not be enduring. What are other negatives? Companies that transition to four days of 10 hours may encounter problems; aside from potentially violating wage regulations, this timetable may push workers’ beyond their limit to maintain peak productivity. Also not all workers may favor this change; it may add stress and limit camaraderie and other desirable on-the-job social aspects.    

Indeed gets right to the point in “Four-Day Work Week Pros and Cons.” This post starts on the upside. The positives of a 4-day/10-hour schedule include: 

• Improved work-life balance 
• More opportunity to recharge and decompress   
• Continuous workflow over a longer span, higher concentration, fewer distractions 
• Higher productivity 
• Increased team building and less time for disputes 

• Enhanced innovation and creativity 
• Greater employee motivation and satisfaction 
• Less commute time 
• Lower overhead costs    
• Ecological advantages, e.g., lower carbon footprint 

On the flip side, disadvantages include: 

• Decreased customer satisfaction, less opportunity for personalized attention 
• Lower productivity over a long working timeframe, project delays 
• Difficulty acclimating, communication gaps 

• Childcare problems in finding arrangements that accommodate longer workdays 
• Lack of applicability to all industries, such as health care, human services, real estate, and others where “a four-day workweek is an expensive risk to undertake” 

In light of items on both sides of the four-day workweek balance sheet, this post offers tips on how to move forward in this realm:  

• Analyze the role of meetings and how to adjust/eliminate them for productivity. 
• Shield employees from burnout over 10 hours, e.g., brief health breaks. 
• Apprise customers of this change, address their concerns, and maintain in-person backup. 
• Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. How are employees faring with the new format? What improvements can be made? What are other companies doing that may serve as a model to deliver more benefits? 
• Finally, monitor and measure the initiative at various points over time to determine whether it’s a success. If not, perhaps revert to the original. 
• Ask employees which day they prefer off and design a program around the responses.

 
All Sides Now 

A change like this is sure to evoke considerations and comments. That’s what Creative Circle had in mind when it posted a poll on the four-day workweek on LinkedIn. See how those who voted and what they had to say. Hint: The numbers tilt heavily on the affirmative end.

What is your view? No matter what it is, the four-day workweek is something to be aware of and ponder.

 

About the author. 
You name it, she covers it. That’s the can-do attitude Sherry M. Adler brings to the craft of writing. A polished marketing and communications professional, she has a passion for learning and the world at large. She uses it plus the power of words to inform and energize stakeholders of all kinds. And to show how all of this can make a difference, she calls her business WriteResults NY, LLC. 

2021 saw huge and exciting developments, from the vaccine rollout to the biggest year yet for renewable energy to the most diverse Oscars batch ever. But as 2022 begins, it’s hard not to wonder where to go from here. We may not know what the future will hold, but we certainly can look to the past for some answers.

Here are some of the biggest moments and trends from 2021, and what they’ll mean for the year to come.

Blockchain

This year, cryptocurrencies and blockchain at large went mainstream, and will no doubt continue to create headlines next year. From Elon Musk’s notorious appearance on SNL resulting in Dogecoin plummeting to, well, Elon Musk being Time’s Person of the Year, cryptocurrencies are more alluring than ever before.

In September, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, with other countries, particularly in the developing world, set to follow suit next year. But, blockchain tech creates immense carbon dioxide emissions, so 2022 will hopefully see more progress for creating renewable and environmentally sustainable methods.

NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are works of digital art that, through blockchain tech, are verifiably owned. They may prove to be more than the expensive gimmick some have chalked it up to be! With more musicians and gamers seeing the value of NFTs as well as institutional auction houses like Christie’s getting into the game, NFTs could be here to say.

Hybrid working (and vacationing)

With the Great Resignation in full swing, employers are understanding that after a year of working at home, maybe desk workers aren’t jumping at the chance to return to the office. 2022 will most likely see more flexibility from employers when it comes to working from home, especially in light of continuing Covid variants. This will compel tech companies to help make the hybrid model work more seamlessly, allowing the work to meet the employee where they’re at.

On the other hand, being able to work from anywhere means being able to work from any vacation spot. This is known as “flexcation,” and while it can be really nice to be able to manage if your vacation days couldn’t line up with your kids’ school holidays, blurring the boundaries between work and vacation can get out of hand. Be careful!

Sustainability

From fashion brands embracing regenerative agriculture and even resale to the increased popularity of plant-based diets, sustainability continued growing in popularity in 2021 — nearly two years after the global youth climate protests that forced countries around the world to reckon with the realities of climate change.

2022 will see consumers making more eco-friendly choices, but it will also see larger-scale impacts like companies opting for carbon offsetting and renewable energy becoming more affordable in general (even as materials for things like solar panels become more expensive due to the supply chain disruptions, but more on that later).

The SuPpLy ChAin!

This year’s headlines have been dominated by the specter of the supply chain. That is, the vast and complex networks of manufacturing and shipping that get the goods you want to you. These disruptions and “shortages,” which came from shifting consumer behavior throughout the pandemic, are not going to disappear in 2022.

Things may be unpredictable and take longer to arrive, but some experts think things will get better later on in 2022. In the meantime, the severity of the disruptions have meant that manufacturing, production, and shipping industries, as well as governments, are scrambling to create better, more efficient, supply chain systems.

Mental Wellness

The last nearly two years have been grueling, and the impact will be unpacked for years to come. Living through so much turmoil has led to an increased interest in mental wellness that will continue into 2022. From digital mental wellness resources to employers understanding the importance of emotional wellbeing, mental health is finally being seen as the vital part of overall health that it is.

Even though it will be easier to access mental health resources, it’s still work to create a regimen that works for you, so be sure to take the time to take care of yourself.

What does productivity mean?

If 2020 was the year of the forced stop, 2021 was certainly the year of the forced return. Our relationships with work suffered, as seen in the Great Resignation, but also in other ways. 2022 will most likely see us really reflecting on what our work means and what productivity really means. Is productivity simply output, or is it input as well? What kind of work do we really want to be doing anyway?

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to leave 2021 behind and jump into 2022. We may not be able to prepare for everything, but we can certainly take what we’ve learned with us.

About the author. 
Sam Mani writes about work, creativity, wellness, and equity — when she’s not cooking, binging television, or annoying her cat. 

Merriam-Webster lives! This ultimate source for all things words has been around since 1828. Toward the beginning of every year, after an exhaustive vetting process, the lexicographers add words and definitions that made the cut. What’s the main factor behind the decision? They sum it up in one word (of course): “usage.” This means: “the editors study the language as it’s used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them.”  

In January 2021, the team introduced 520 words. A number of them trace their roots to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include: 

• Pod (noun): Mainly during the lockdown phases of the pandemic, some people formed their own pod. The word signifies a small group of family, friends, neighbors or others. The members bond together and agree to limit exposure to people outside of the pod to lower the risk of contracting and spreading the disease. Those in the pod might share responsibility for things like childcare, education, and meal prep, as well as dining and socializing together. 

• Wet market (noun): To understand this term, start by picturing a farmers’ market. Then expand that vision. These commercial centers sell fresh produce and other perishable goods. The list of items also tends to include live animals, which may be slaughtered right on the spot. Some experts speculate that unsafe conditions at wet markets may be the source of the coronavirus epidemic.  

Here are some others from the class of January 2021: 

• Decarceration (noun): Think of this word at face value as the opposite of incarceration. It concerns the release of those who are in prison. But the term has broader implications too. In this context, decarceration is a practice or movement. The objective is to decrease the number of people sent to prison in the first place as well as develop channels to release those who are in custody.  

• Hygge (noun and adjective): From the Danish language, hygge is pronounced “hue-gah” or “hoo-guh.” In its noun form, it denotes a quality of coziness, which makes a person feel content and comfortable. As an adjective, it means cozy or comfortable. The word shot to prominence during the pandemic, as people sought to offset stress with pleasantries. What is an example of hygge in a sentence? “Grace, simplicity, and gratitude are the principles hygge practitioners adhere to for an abiding sense of well-being.”  

• Sapiosexual (adjective and noun): When it comes to romance, is high intelligence the number one factor that attracts you to someone? If so, you are sapiosexual. 

 

The Next Batch of New Words in Town

The list did not stop with publication of the large infusion of new words in January. Merriam-Webster kept at it and added another set in October 2021. The pick of the litter includes: 

• Blank check company (noun): Do you tune in to CNBC on weekdays? If so, you hear about this and that SPAC, short for special purpose acquisition company. It’s another term for blank check company. They refer to a “corporate shell set up by investors for the sole purpose of raising money through an initial public offering (IPO) to acquire another business yet to be determined.” The largest blank check companies at the time of this writing include: Vertiv Holdings, Jaws Spitfire Acquisition Corp. and Tuscan Holdings Corp. 

• Dad bod (noun): Like it or not, this term denotes the physique of a stereotypical father. It’s a body type that is not particularly muscular or toned and a little pudgy in the mid-section. But fret not — it’s a hot new look today. A commentator on the Merriam-Webster site notes: “Even Hollywood latched onto the more attainable physique with actors sporting bodies that were not chiseled, not incredibly lean, and a little soft in the middle.” Welcome to the era of the dad bod.  

• Deplatform (verb): Another new word that starts with “de,” it has to do with removing someone from something. In this case, if signifies banishing a registered user from a communication medium (platform). Social media and blogging sites are the main channels. This action occurs because the person/group has violated the terms of service.  

• Digital nomad (noun): A perfect blend of “digital” and “nomad,” this term describes a person who works totally over the Internet (“digital”) while traveling (“nomad”). But there’s more to the second half. Such a person has no permanent fixed home address (the essence of a “nomad”). Investopedia adds some color to the term. “A digital nomad may work out of cafes, beaches or hotel rooms, and as they are not tied down to any one location.”     

• Fourth trimester (noun): This new catchphrase adds another three months to the standard nine-month gestation process. The fourth trimester is a challenging phase; it’s rife with adjustments for all involved. The mother recovers from giving birth and transitions into caring for her newborn during this postpartum period. The infant acclimates to life outside the womb. The fourth trimester is a trying time, when “women and their families experience substantial physiological, social, and emotional changes.”  

• Vaccine passport (noun): This new entry brings to mind an ad slogan from American Express, created many years back and recently revised. “Don’t leave home without it.” That’s the importance of a vaccine passport, hoisted into the spotlight by COVID-19. This physical or digital document shows proof of vaccination against one or several infectious diseases. New York was the first state to issue a vaccine passport—the Excelsior Pass. And you need to flash it or other proof to eat indoors at restaurants in NYC and enter health clubs and indoor entertainment venues.   

• Whataboutism (noun): This word comes from the fractious political scene today. It is a rhetorical device; it’s used by activists, advocates, commentators, elected officials, pundits, and spin doctors. This ploy is a way of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming an offense committed by another is similar or worse. Think of it as a derivative of one-upping. It deflects, side steps, and counteracts the root issue by drawing attention to another thing. Whataboutism aims to muddle, befuddle and, above all, obfuscate.  

In and Out

With all of these new words coming into vogue, a question may occur. Does Merriam Webster ever remove words? Yes, but not nearly as many as it adds. Reader’s Digest explains. “Some words recently hit the chopping block in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary—meaning they’re no longer included in the print edition.” The examples provided include the following: frutescent, hodad, snollygoster, sternforemost and Vitamin G.  

 

About the author. 
You name it, she covers it. That’s the can-do attitude Sherry M. Adler brings to the craft of writing. A polished marketing and communications professional, she has a passion for learning and the world at large. She uses it plus the power of words to inform and energize stakeholders of all kinds. And to show how all of this can make a difference, she calls her business WriteResults NY, LLC.