Four-day working week: Northland businesses say initiative will become a drawcard for candidates

Tony Gordon Panel Beaters & Autopainters owner Kevin Hurley (left) introduced a four-day work week at his business in 2018.

The four-day work week could be on its way to becoming a type of clickbait among jobseekers trawling for new beginnings.

The concept is that employees would work four days a week with the same workload and pay.

While there is no pinpoint data readily available about the number of searches made specifically for roles offering four-day work weeks, Northland businesses say they expect it become sought after by applicants.

Kevin Hurley, owner of Tony Gordon Panelbeaters and Auto Painters in Whangārei, has been trialling the concept since 2018.

He said the promise of a long weekend hadn’t been as much of a drawcard as expected - yet.

“A lot of people are still timid about it. When I talk to them, they think they’ll only get paid four days and not five, but you’re still doing the same hours, so you’ll get the same money and an extra day off.”

But once that understanding settles in, Hurley reckons jobseekers won’t look back.

“Absolutely, who wouldn’t want to do four days a week?”

He gave the example of a man he had hired upon his return from Perth, who had been drawn to the role by the promise of a four-day work week.

Malcolm Shepherd, founder of Northland financial advice company Quantum Financial Advisers, introduced a four-day week and work-from-home options for a large portion of his staff.

Quantum Financial Advisers founder Malcolm Shepherd. Photo / Supplied

It was too early in the piece for Shepherd to say whether the working arrangements had attracted more candidates to roles, but he thought it eventually would.

“I think it’s that whole thing around building your life, not just building a job,” he said.

Dr Susan Wardell, senior lecturer of social anthropology at Otago University, believed the appeal of a four-day week was because the current nine-to-five, five-day work week is out of date and out of touch.

The status quo comes from an era where social organisations were “quite different” to life now, she said.

“Things like family structures, who was working, how childcare was managed - all of that is completely different.”

Wardell said the traditional work week’s origins trace back to North America and Europe, where there was typically one male head of household who worked outside of the home.

“The degree of affordability of everyday items, food and housing, were able to be supported by one single income.”

That was until social shifts saw women enter the workforce, especially as the rising cost of living could no longer be met by a household’s sole income, Wardell said.

She described how the norm left many people feeling as if something was wrong with them because they couldn’t keep pace with the daily demands of family, community, and personal wellbeing.

“The way it is set up - the literal hours expected or the number of staff hired - doesn’t really take into account life; how it is now.”

But the four-day work week challenged the expectation of employees to “go over and above” to make work their “purpose and identity” - a demand that drove in-house competition and made it increasingly difficult for people to set boundaries around their work lives, Wardell said.

When asked about the role the pandemic played in the four-day work week’s popularity, Wardell said that in a broader sense, the disruption of the day-to-day routine for a certain demographic offered a glimpse of a “very different world”.