Refinitiv Newscasts - Meet the company where staff work four-day weeks
17/03/2022 15:40
Click the following link to watch video: https://share.newscasts.refinitiv.com/link?entryId=1_k2vjjkus&referenceId=tag:reuters.com,2022:newsml_OV522716032022RP1_930&pageId=RefinitivNewscasts Source: Reuters Description: When French company boss Laurent de la Clergerie decided to let his staff work a four-day week, on the same pay as before, he knew he risked hurting his bottom line. But a year on, he says the opposite has happened: his LDLC company selling consumer technology has increased its annual turnover by 40% without hiring any extra staff. Olivia Chan reports. Short Link: https://refini.tv/3u4Y25E Video Transcript: Do four-day weeks work? When French company boss Laurent De La Clergerie decided to let his staff work a four-day week on the same pay as before, some people took him for a crazy person. But a year on, his LDLC company selling consumer technology has increased annual turnover by 40% without hiring any extra staff. In my mind, it was obvious it would work. I had the intuition that this would bring only good. As the world emerges from a global health crisis that prompted many people to re-evaluate their work-life balance, companies and workers around the world are asking an important question: Can they work less? De La Clergerie says before he embarked on the change, he did the math. LDLC employs approximately 1,000 people. He worked out that even in the worst case scenario, the change would add to labor costs by at most $1.6 million per year. It was a manageable risk he was willing to take. One could think that I managed to turn lead into gold. I don't think that's the case. I think that when you put wellbeing into the workplace, when you care for your teams, when you concentrate on that, in fact, you gain in productivity. The equation for productivity isn't simply just a number of hours worked. Since then, he said that absenteeism and sick leaves have gone down. The company has also not had to hire new people to offset the reduction in hours worked and although the four-day week is not the only factor. De La Clergerie says it contributed to a jump in turnover from around $550 million before the change to nearly $770 million. We can be a capitalist and a socialist. One doesn't cancel the other out. When I see this working today, I would go further. If you are a socialist, it doesn't prevent you from being a capitalist. On the contrary, it allows you to perform even better. That's what is happening today. Johann Peters works in one of LDLC stores near its headquarters in a suburb of Lyon. He says the extra week day-off was a godsend. More time for my private life, more time to deal with all the things I need to do, and above all, more time to take care of the children. I used to see my daughter every other Sunday and that was very little time. France already has some of the world's most employee-friendly working practices, with the legal limit of 35 hours of work per week. But De La Clergerie's four-day week is generous even for France. And his company is not the only one. Microsoft gave its Japan-based employees Friday's off in 2019, who said it saw productivity rise 40%. Consumer group Unilever launched a four-day week trial for local staff in New Zealand. Spanish telecoms company Telefonica has trialed a four-day week for 10% of its domestic workforce