Panasonic has introduced plans to supply a four-day workweek to workers in Japan in an effort to enhance productiveness and appeal to higher employees, in keeping with a brand new report from Nikkei Asia. The transfer comes after the Japanese authorities made official suggestions to personal employers in 2021 that included a shorter workweek.

The four-day workweek has been floated all over the world in varied varieties from Finland to New Zealand. Sometimes, the shorter weeks simply imply that employers make the 4 days of labor longer, whereas sustaining one thing near 40 hours. Other instances the businesses will really offer a shorter week with fewer whole hours, so that folks can pursue extra leisure time or extra schooling.

“We must support the well-being of our employees,” President and CEO Yuki Kusumi lately stated, in keeping with Nikkei.

From Nikkei:

Panasonic hopes to provide employees extra time to pursue their private pursuits, whether or not volunteering or a aspect job. Details can be ironed out by every working firm.

Just 8% of Japanese corporations supplied greater than two assured days off a week in a 2020 survey by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Those that do are normally seeking to assist employees meet the calls for of their private lives, like Yahoo Japan and Sompo Himawari Life Insurance, which started providing a 3rd day without work in 2017 solely to these caring for youngsters or getting old kin.

Companies which have trialed a shorter work week, whereas sustaining aggressive pay have typically discovered no lack of productiveness. In truth, tech corporations have discovered that slashing hours usually results in excessive productiveness, to not point out extra satisfaction among the many workforce. When Microsoft in Japan tried out a four-day workweek in 2019, productiveness shot up 40%, in keeping with the Washington Post.

Despite having a popularity within the U.S. as a workaholic tradition, Japanese employees really work fewer hours than their American counterparts, in keeping with the newest knowledge from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. ranked eleventh for many hours labored by the typical employee amongst OECD international locations, whereas Japan ranked twenty sixth. The prime 5, so as, included: Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, South Korea, and Russia.

Americans have been promised a shorter work week for generations. In truth, financial consultants of the Sixties had been sure we’d be working simply 16-hour workweeks by now, with robots doing the vast majority of the work. Your solely downside was going to be what to do with all of your leisure time.

An article that ran in a North Carolina newspaper on November 26, 1967 promised all of it:

Those who starvation for time without work from work could take coronary heart from the forecast of political scientist Sebastian de Grazia that the typical work week, by the 12 months 2000, will common 31 hours, and maybe as few as 21. Twenty years later, on-the-job hours could have dwindled to 26, and even 16.

But what’s going to individuals do with all that free time? The outlook will not be cheery.

As De Grazia sees it: “There is reason to fear, as some do, that free time, forced free time, will bring on the restless tick of boredom, idleness, immorality, and increased personal violence. If the cause is identified as automation and the preference for higher intelligence, nonautomated jobs may increase, but they will carry the stigma of stupidity. Men will prefer not to work rather than to accept them. Those who do accept will increasingly come to be a politically inferior class.”

One doable answer: a separation of revenue from work; maybe a assured annual wage to supply “the wherewithal for a life of leisure for all those who think they have the temperament.”

Where did all of that leisure time go? Your boss used it to purchase his second dwelling.