Is the five-day workweek heading toward extinction?

The five-day, 40-hour workweek may one day be as obsolete as the typewriter and the rotary dial telephone.

There appears to be a small, yet growing, trend toward four-day weeks, flexible work hours and staggered schedules as employers look for ways to attract and retain staff while boosting morale, controlling costs and maintaining productivity.

Don't look now, but this is a four-day workweek because of the Fourth of July, which most businesses observed Monday.

The trend toward a four-day workweek began slowly a few years ago, but thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more employers — and even some nations — are offering shorter workweeks (as well as work-from-home options and other benefits) many employment experts believe can improve the balance between work and home life.

Several nations, including Spain, Japan and New Zealand, are testing four-day workweeks in various employment sectors. France adopted a 35-hour workweek more than two decades ago. And several major employers such as Google, Amazon and Deloitte have also dabbled with the concept. Amazon is also piloting a 30-hour workweek for some employee groups.

The job search website ZipRecruiter reports the number of job postings mentioning a four-day week has tripled in the past three years as many employers look for ways to attract job applicants.

"From a competitive standpoint, employers who are successful in developing an effective four-day workweek scheduling system will gain a clear and compelling advantage from an attraction and retention standpoint," according to J. Bruce Tracey, a human resource management professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Tracey was quoted in a recent article about four-day workweeks published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

"There is evidence that this type of work schedule increases productivity and reduces costs associated with burnout, stress, absenteeism, turnover and related employee challenges," he continued.

In 2019, Microsoft Japan experimented with a shorter workweek, allowing 2,300 employees to "choose a variety of flexible work styles" with the idea of seeing whether productivity and morale would increase if employee hours were decreased.

According to the company, results were extremely positive with happier employees who were 40% more productive and were absent from work less often. The company also reduced its overhead because it could turn off the lights and adjust the thermostat when no one was working. Employees could also spend more time with their families while lowering their commuting costs and often saving on child care expenses as well.

However, not all workweek shortening experiments have been as successful. The State of Utah enacted a mandatory four-day workweek in 2011 for all state employees in an effort to lower energy costs, improve air quality and help recruit and retain state employees. But the savings never materialized and the experiment was abandoned.

There is also concern in some circles a shorter workweek could actually increase employee stress and fatigue, especially when employers try to compress 40 hours into four days (four 10-hour days).

Nonetheless, if the world continues to move toward a four-day workweek, it won't be the first time employers have reduced worker hours. There was a time when most workers in the industrialized world labored six or seven days a week. It wasn't until the late 19th century most workers at least had Sundays off.

Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co., decided in 1926 he would give his workers not just one, but TWO days off every week, believing they would buy more cars if they had more leisure time. He was right and over the next decade most American manufacturers followed Ford's lead.

For years I've toyed with the idea of adding more leisure time into the workweek not by instituting a four-day workweek or by shortening the work day. My idea is to actually ADD a day to the week, so instead of seven days in the week, we'd have eight. The additional day would be called "Funday" and would be slipped in between Wednesday and Thursday. With the addition of Funday, most people would work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before taking Funday off. They'd complete their week by working Thursday and Friday before taking Saturday and Sunday off. That way, if an employee decided to take Thursday and Friday off, he would automatically have a five-day weekend. If there happened to be a Monday holiday in the mix you'd suddenly be able to enjoy a six-day weekend.

While you're at it, just go ahead and take Tuesday and Wednesday off, too.

I'll see you next week.

St. Louis among nation's top hockey towns

By the time this column is printed Tuesday, the 2021 Stanley Cup Finals will have just ended Monday night with a four-game sweep by the Tampa Bay Lightning over the Montreal Canadiens or there will be pivotal Game Five on Wednesday night in Tampa, Florida.

Either way, I thought it was noteworthy to report a recent survey of U.S. cities ranks St. Louis as the nation's fifth best hockey town.

The survey, conducted by WalletHub, looked at 73 metropolitan areas with professional and/or collegiate hockey teams on the basis of more than 20 criteria. Among the factors considered were the number of NHL division championships and Stanley Cup wins, average ticket prices, fan engagements (calculated on the basis of Twitter followers and Facebook posts per capita), game attendance versus stadium attendance, etc.

The top 10 hockey towns in the United States, according to the survey, are 1) Boston; 2) Detroit; 3) Pittsburgh; 4) New York; 5) St. Louis; 6) Denver; 7) Newark, New Jersey; 8) Tampa; 9) Chicago; 10) Buffalo, New York.

The worst hockey town in the survey? Huntsville, Alabama. (They have hockey in Huntsville? Who knew?)

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