While most nations around the world are still grappling with the idea of a four-day work week with no pay cuts, a restaurant in the US has just skipped this heated debate all together and settled for a three-day work week instead.
But there’s one catch. Employees have to work for 13 to 14 hours a day. The brain behind this radical programme which began in February is Justin Lindsey, an operator of a Chick-fil-A eatery located in Kendall, Miami.
Lindsey told Insider that he created the initiative to minimise burnout, increase retention of his workers, and provide employees with a consistent work schedule.
He said he organised his team into two rotating groups, which he refers to as “pods”, that alternate between three-day blocks of the 13- to 14-hour shifts. Because Chick-fil-A restaurants do not open on Sundays, the rotations are evenly distributed.
“My idea was to provide staff with this gift of time by creating a scheduling system where they would know exactly what days they worked for as long as they work here,” Lindsey explained to the news site.
According to the chain restaurant owner, his goal was to shorten the work week and provide a consistent schedule so that employees could plan their lives outside of work ahead of time.
“Now employees can look at the calender six months and know these are the three that they work on any given week. Traditionally, at least at Chick-fil-A, that was never a possibility before,” he added.
Karen Lowe, the director of the non-profit organisation 4 Day Week SA, is sceptical of this work mode and believes it is too radical. 4 Day Week SA is set to begin a pioneering trial of the four-day work week in the country from February next year.
Lowe criticised the amount of time that the employees will have to spend working.
“Research already shows that individuals are not able to be productive within the normal eight-hour work day. So how on earth is increasing the intensity of work over three days going to work?
“I believe that is going to have an adverse effect on the workers’ mental health and well-being.”
She said there will be added pressure on working parents who have to deal with arriving home after working for such a long time and having to spend time with their children.
Lindsey claimed that while retention has been strong, there have been some people that he had to “remove” from the team.
“I always say the three-day work week does not work for everyone, but for those that it does, it’s really powerful to see the impact that it has on their lives,” he told Insider.
According to Lowe, such an initiative is counter-intuitive because companies should be aiming for productivity, which can only happen if workers have enough time to rest and a manageable workload.
“The more you rest, the better your well-being, the less stress you’re under, the more productive you will be,” said Lowe.
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