Employees Who Shifted To 4-Day Work Week Spend Their Extended Free Time Sleeping, Says Report

Employees who decided to switch to a 32-hour work week slept 7.58 hours per night, nearly an hour more than when they worked 40-hour per week. The findings were revealed by lead researcher Juliet Schor, a sociologist and economist at Boston College, surveying over 180 organisations worldwide as they transform to slashed schedules through six-month pilot programs.

Massive Decrease In The Percentage Of Sleep-Deprived People

Schor's surveys of 304 employees from 16 companies came after a series of international, six-month trials conducted by a non-profit group called 4 Day Week Global and at a time when the pandemic has forced employers across industries to reconsider work schedules.

Since the pandemic upended schedules and showed many workers how flexibility could improve their lives, the concept of shortened workweeks has received attention.

Schor stated, "I wasn't surprised that people are getting a little more sleep, but I was surprised at how robust the changes were. The percentage of people considered sleep deprived, getting less than 7 hours of nightly sleep, dropped from 42.6 per cent to 14.5 per cent on four-day work schedules."

Visible Improvement In The Four-Day Week Schedule Workers

According to NDTV, Schor's preliminary data declared that workers on four-day schedules in the study improved personal well-being and professional productivity measures, which may be directly related to additional sleep time.

A management professor of the University of Washington's Michael G Foster School of Business, Christopher Barnes, said that sleep and work are competition and trading sleep for work is troublesome. The consequences of sleep deprivation include unethical behaviour, lower work engagement, less helpful behaviour toward colleagues, and more abusive and aggressive leadership tendencies.

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