This was a big week for changes to the “traditional” workplace. For the next six months, 38 North American companies are participating in the “4 Day Week Global,” pilot. Can employees work 80% of the time while maintaining 100% productivity? Can less meetings save our souls?

Joe O’Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, says, “More and more companies are recognizing that the new frontier for competition is quality of life, and that reduced-hour, productivity-focused working is the vehicle to give them that competitive edge.” Remember when Richard Nixon said a four day workweek would arrive in the “not too distant future”? Neither do I, but he said it. In 1956.

It’s an interesting time for this initiative to formally launch. As a nation, we are tip-toeing away from wearing masks as step 1 of an attempt to “live life again” after the scariest Covid days. While the human brain is still trying to make sense of what happened the last two years, our bosses want us back at work.

But what really works for work?

Starting Monday, most Google employees are expected to return to physical locations three days a week and many employees are asking why. Thanks to cloud-based collaboration tools, once many of the initial glitches were addressed, teams were more effective than ever. How do we know? A pretty stellar year of corporate profits, that 2021 was!

Why should flexibility be given up/back when productivity levels were often exceeding expectations during the mandatory “work-from-home” days we faced. Globally.

Management teams are struggling and it’s a corporate communications nightmare. During H2 2020, Twitter made an announcement that employees would be able to work from home “forever.” Um, not so much, see you in the office, says the new CEO, Parag Agrawal. Google tried to take a hard stance in 2021 before the omicron spikes; that is, management said employees could apply to work from home, while disclosing only the most exceptional cases would be approved. The company has since softened the message, saying 85% of applications have been approved. Just think of the amount of corporate hours that have been spent on this issue within Google alone. And how annoying it has been for the employee. Only to keep changing.
Jason Aten from Inc. wrote a great article about what employees really need right now. Give it a read.