An increasing number of workplaces are embracing a four-day working week with a small band of bosses hailing increased productivity and mental health benefits.
The University of Sydney Business School's Professor John Buchanan, who is also a co-director of the Mental Wealth Initiative, said employees working four days instead of five were often more focused on the job.
'The work-life balance is self-evident,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
Iceland and Spain have trialled a four-day week but have yet to legislate it while New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured, right, with fiancé Clarke Gayford) in 2020 expressed support for the idea without committing to new laws
An increasing number of workplaces are embracing the four-day working week with a small band of bosses hailing the productivity and mental health benefits (stock image)
The University of Sydney Business School's Professor John Buchanan, who is also a co-director of the Mental Wealth Initiative, said employees working four days instead of five were often more focused on the job
New Zealand estate planning group Perpetual Guardian adopted a four-day working week in 2018 with founder Andrew Barnes embracing a system that gave full-time staff an extra day off to get chores done.
Professor Buchanan, who has spent more than three decades specialising in industrial relations research, said that extra day off was good for productivity, referencing the Kiwi firm that draws up wills.
'He worked out that if he could give his workers an extra day off they'd actually be more productive on the job instead of being distracted by sick children or getting chores done,' he said.
A survey of 378 employers last year, by superannuation group Mercer, found 27 per cent of them were offering the opportunity to work 38 hours over four days instead of five, up from 21 per cent in 2017.
At a nationwide level, only France has legislated a four-day week during the past three decades, with the Socialist Party introducing the 35-hour policy in 1998 only for their conservative successors, led by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, voting to scrap it in 2008.
'Employers ran a hard line against them,' Professor Buchanan said.
Iceland and Spain have trialled a four-day week but have yet to legislate it while New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in 2020 expressed support for the idea without committing
