[The Editors' Verdict] A Four-Day Workweek Without Monday Blues or Burning Thursdays

Kyung-ho Lee, Head of Issue & Trend Team

Hanwha Pharmaceutical, a small and medium-sized pharmaceutical manufacturer, operates a flexible working system according to the job characteristics of employees in production, office, and sales positions. Since 2020, it has implemented a four-day workweek (Monday to Thursday) for workers at its Chuncheon plant. Employees work 8 hours each on Monday and Thursday, and 11 hours and 30 minutes on Tuesday and Wednesday. On the 25th, the company was introduced as an example of a "work-family balance excellence company" at the 4th Population Emergency Measures Meeting presided over by President Yoon Suk-yeol. The government stated, "Through customized support, it has shown that manufacturing companies can adopt a four-day workweek without a decline in productivity." In addition, the number of domestic companies fully adopting the four-day workweek or a 4.5-day workweek is increasing. Related bills have been proposed in the National Assembly, mainly by opposition parties, and the two major labor unions are also urging the adoption of the four-day workweek. The business community opposes it, arguing that labor market flexibility and labor reform should come first and that the four-day workweek is premature.

Worldwide, experiments with the four-day workweek are in full swing. Early evaluations are positive. The NGO ‘4 Day Week Global’ conducted a six-month survey in 2022 of 41 companies in the United States and Canada that adopted the four-day workweek. Companies rated the impact of the four-day workweek on recruitment 8.87 out of 10, and both productivity and performance received scores of 7.7. All 41 companies said they "would not return to the five-day workweek." Employees also rated the four-day workweek 9.1 out of 10, and 95% said they wanted to continue working four days a week. Notably, 7 out of 10 employees (69%) reported reduced burnout, and 4 out of 10 (40%) said they experienced less stress. Iceland, which conducted a pilot project involving 2,500 people from 2014 to 2019, also reported increased productivity and improved work-life balance. Japan, where more than 50 people die annually from overwork, is promoting "work style reform," and in 2022, large companies such as Panasonic and Hitachi also joined the initiative.

There are limitations. In the case of the 41 companies, since the survey period was only six months, it was difficult to specifically verify business performance such as sales, operating profit, and productivity, and only three of them were in manufacturing, which is the core of the four-day workweek. Most of the 2,500 participants in Iceland were public sector workers. Although Panasonic attracted attention immediately after its announcement, only 97 out of 5,000 eligible employees actually used the four-day workweek. The company also said, "It is more important to provide an environment where individuals can choose how they work than to increase the number of users."

The four-day workweek assumes no change in income, so work efficiency or productivity must be maintained or improved. This is the ‘100-80-100’ principle: investing 80% of the time to achieve 100% of the results while receiving (or paying) 100% of the wages. Monday is a day when office workers dislike going to work so much that they suffer from "Monday blues." Friday, known as "Bulgeum" (Burning Friday), is a day when work concentration drops from the afternoon and leaving work early is common. Various surveys show that the days with the lowest concentration for work and study are Monday and Friday, while Tuesday and Wednesday have the highest concentration. The four-day workweek should not be ‘Monday to Thursday work - Friday to Sunday off’ but rather ‘Tuesday to Friday work - Saturday to Monday off,’ focusing work on four days and resting for three days.