“We’ll get back to you pretty quickly during working hours,” it says. “If you’re messaging us outside of these, we’re probably busy with other things, like horse-riding, karate, or good ole-fashioned sleep.”
The firm is one of a growing number of employers giving their workers an extra day off for the same pay as a five-day week. There is emerging evidence that it can boost productivity for bosses and happiness for workers. Playgrounds, garden centres and gymnasiums are filling up on Fridays with people extending their leisure into a five-day working week that has been a staple of western culture since Henry Ford adopted it in 1926.
And it is not just small businesses that might be spotting a chance to save a little money by turning the lights off one day a week. A marketing company in Glasgow, Pursuit Marketing, that switched 120 people to four days in late 2016 claims it has been instrumental in a 30% increase in productivity. Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand trust business that supervises nearly NZ$200bn in assets, has switched its 240 employees to a four-day week and has reported a 20% increase in productivity. A string of small businesses in the UK have contacted the Guardian to enthuse about higher productivity, greater staff satisfaction – and even bigger profits. Talk of family lives reinvigorated and stress levels plunging abounds.
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