Johannesburg - The World Economic Forum’s recent annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland covered a wide range of topics including the Ukraine war, climate change and new technologies.
However, one softer issue which drew much debate was hybrid working and shorter work weeks. Speakers at the conference spoke for and against hybrid work weeks, with much of the concern focusing on how working from home, or for only four days a week, could impact productivity and workplace dynamics.
Experts believe that remote and hybrid working is a fast-growing trend which allows employees to work from home and attend to the traditional workplace/office intermittently. While countries such as Spain, Belgium, Japan and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) have already adopted the four-day work week, the Covid-19 pandemic has reignited these conversations and forcing employers to rethink the importance of workplace flexibility and benefits.
Whether a four-day week can work in the South African context is debatable. However, if there is a possibility of such legislation materialising, employers in certain sectors may need to consider the way they operate but that seems to be a long way off still.
Spokesperson for the Department Of Employment and Labour, Teboho Thejane said at this stage there are no plans to that effect.
“Whether it is possible to reduce working hours will be dependent on whether the labour markets want it or not,” he said.
Prof Dieter von Fintel from the Department of Economics at Stellenbosch University, said the four-day work week is premised on the idea that workers can allocate more time to other leisure activities, helping them to avoid burnout but also to stimulate creativity in the workplace. In turn, employees are likely to be more mentally present and productive at work.
“The idea is that workers cut out dead time at work that would usually be spent on unproductive activity and instead fit in four fully productive days on the job without ending up doing less at the end of the week. In this way, there should arguably be no productivity losses when a day is cut out of the work week. This idea has become more popular since the start of the pandemic, as workers struggle with burnout and the large mental health burden in the workplace has become more apparent,” he said.
Von Dieter said no South African studies have been done on the issue, and noted that many jobs do not really match the pattern described above.
“Take, for example, work in retail where time on task is an essential part of the job, even if not every hour of the day is used to make an actual sale. Would we keep shops open for one fewer day if retail work weeks were shortened? That is doubtful. Shops must stay open and be fully staffed for the full retail week. Many jobs are characterised by time on task and need workers present even in unproductive moments,” he added.
Von Dieter said some work can be compressed into shorter times and some can be cut out without disrupting the business continuity. In these contexts, there is more potential for a range of complex tasks to be simplified to fit into shorter spaces of time. These are typically jobs that can be enhanced and complemented by technological and procedural innovations.
“I do not think that is the case in SA. Most South Africans work in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations, which require time on task and cannot be optimised to fit into four days. The type of job that can be modified to fit into a four-day work week is mostly done by the highly educated, which is in a minority in our workforce,” he said.
In developed economies, a larger proportion of workers fits the bill for a four-day work week, so that this option is a more realistic possibility there. Given the pressures on our own economy – loadshedding, the high costs of doing business, and tight labour regulations, employers are not currently well placed to adapt and implement the kind of processes to optimise work to fit into 4 days.
“Simply put, I don’t think we are ready for this. Because we have such high unemployment, a shorter work week could mean that employers hire more workers for fewer hours. Could we use this opportunity to create more work? Maybe. But, these changes could have a number of unintended consequences. Workers who are paid hourly wages will inevitably have lower total earnings in a week because they work fewer hours, potentially contributing to poverty in the short run,” von Dieter said.
One solution to this problem would be to guarantee the same monthly income as before the shift to a shorter work week. But that would mean that many employers will embark on a hiring freeze, not being willing to employ additional workers at high wages. Many (especially smaller) firms simply cannot afford to hire more workers at higher wages.
Associate in Employment Law at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr (CDH), Abigail Butcher agreed with von Dieter and said SA has industry-specific regulations that guide employment and working conditions and that our economy is productivity-dependent.
“We are highly regulated. We work 45 hours per week and it will be a long time coming before we see this changing. It will be too destabilising for a country like SA, ”she said.
An international labour study showed that 16.4 million South Africans work for up to 49 hours a week which indicates that SA is one of the hardest working countries in the world.