Reuters Next: Post-pandemic work: four days a week, no meetings, no office
02/12/2021 10:17
By Sakura Murakami and Belén Carreño
TOKYO, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Four days a week, no meetings, you
choose the hours and work where you want.
The coronavirus pandemic has sped up a transition into more
flexible and diverse working hours around the world, opening up
ways of working that were unthinkable just a few years ago.
"The traditional model of how we work has been broken,"
Meghana Reddy, vice president of video messaging service Loom,
told the Reuters Next conference.
"I think there's a real opportunity there to just say, let's
have work fit into our lives in a better way, as opposed to us
fit our lives into work."
Loom has moved to a flexible model where employees may or
may not come to the office and even move to live in other places
without being penalised for doing so. Meetings have also been
reduced to a minimum.
Far from this renowned Silicon Valley model of flexibility,
Jin Montesano, Chief People Officer at luxury toilet maker Lixil
Group Corp, has managed to bring worker-centred policies to one
of Japan's most emblematic companies, navigating traditional
"salaryman" culture.
Japan is known for a rigid work structure, where long hours
at the office symbolized a strong work ethic. However, in recent
years, cases of so-called "over-work" where employees have
committed suicide or suffered health issues have forced the
country to reckon with its work culture.
Lixil decided to get rid of core working hours and morning
meetings, while also revisiting the concept of what an office
should be.
"It's no longer the place to work...wherever you get work
done is where you work," said Montesano during a panel
discussion on the Future of Work. "What we want to do is
reimagine the office as a place for communication,
collaboration, brainstorming, reconnecting, and having that
ability to maybe have a deeper conversation that you just can't
achieve online."
Spanish high-end apparel brand Desigual introduced a
four-day work week at its headquarters in Barcelona last month,
raising expectations in the business and political arena in
Europe, where some other pilot trials have been launched.
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N2OZ2SF
No employee works on Friday and they can choose to work
remotely any of the four working days. The company has
subsidized half the cost of the 13% reduction in working hours,
with employees overwhelmingly agreeing to a 6.5% paycut.
At a time of concern about the resignation of millions of
workers from their jobs, a trend known as The Great Resignation,
all three executives agreed that their policies are serving to
attract new talent. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2R224Q
Reconciling the needs of customer service, or face-to-face
shifts in factories or shops, were some of the main challenges
facing the women entrepreneurs.
But Coral Alcaraz, Chief People Officer at Desigual, said it
was critical to address them: "The future of work is not the
future any more."
(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Belén Carreño; Edited by Jane
Wardell)
((Sakura.Murakami@thomsonreuters.com;))