I was recently contacted by a journalist who was doing a piece on the 4 Day Week that is being touted in many EU nations and how companies in India should be responding or following suit. I had no time to prepare but did speak something from the heart and I am sure there was some value for the journalist.
But it got me thinking and that's why I am writing out this post today. Let's examine where the 4 Day Week thinking comes from. It comes from perhaps a sense of achievement and prosperity and also a belief that this sense or state is not likely to change in the foreseeable future. "So as a nation we can afford this perk as a matter of appeasement for the citizenry."
Again "sense of achievement and prosperity" comes from a base where generally the desires of the population are being met through enough means of production and through the provision of efficient services required to live well. And all of this is largely based on the concepts of free market economics or capitalism or in many cases state controlled economics that are all more or less based on the fact that increased production and consumption will result in increased prosperity. Here is a chart of a trend that shows that as a nation's prosperity rises, the work hours reduce.
If you notice, most nations do not focus on the demand side of the problem. Meaning, if desires themselves could be regulated or controlled, there would be less need for production and therefore less need for people to work and therefore perhaps more work life balance. I guess, free information flow, comparison of levels of prosperity and the perceived development along with greed amongst those in power that resulted in gross inequalities put models that focussed on the demand side, out of business.
This state of a "sense of achievement and prosperity" is a function of the evolution of the country on a scale that is decided by free market economics based policy. So in developing economies that are striving to move up the scale, citizens will likely be ready to work long hours and also more days to be able to achieve that prosperity level. Once that state is reached and by all assessments the state seems predictable for the foreseeable future, discussions about shorter weeks start to surface. Historically over the past century, work hours have been on a decline, except briefly after a war when countries have worked hard to recover their economies. See chart below. But do note that these are for the "developed" countries of today.
Now let's take a different view. What if there was a way to influence or inspire the populace to adopt conscious capitalism or minimalism where people willingly adopt the practice of satisfying only their real needs and not their wants or desires? We saw this happening naturally during the pandemic when we realised that we could live with much less. What if that movement was encouraged and catches on? Yes there would be some pain for sure but I am sensing that the gains would be far more enduring.
How will that new model look like? How will it work sustainably? There are many unanswered questions to be tackled by more informed and powerful bodies, but there has to be a beginning made.
Already there are many communities that are getting established that live a fairly modern life and yet are in close harmony with nature and the earth and the principle seems to be based on conscious capitalism and minimalism.
As I train and inspire younger minds, I am of late, leaving this thought in their heads for them to ruminate on. They will be the future leaders and they have the opportunity to make things right again.