Unilever Australia this week announced the option for 500 of its team members to move to four day weeks, while still retaining 100 per cent of their salary.
CEO Nicky Sparshott announced the 12 month trial, declaring that employees (those not working in factories at least) can design their work weeks how they need, to help remove 20 per cent of their hours. She said that as a business they will remove “low value” and productivity-sucking things like meetings and email-related issues to help make the transition, and use the trial to help gain a competitive edge on acquiring talent and enabling a high-performance culture.
She added that the shift is about removing barriers that may “potentially limit value creation”, and enabling the team to focus on creating impact and delivering results.
Unilever has already successfully trialed the four-day week in New Zealand, and reported results including 34 per cent fewer sick days, and staff stress levels falling by 33 per cent. Meanwhile, a “Zest” for the job saw a 15 per cent increase, while issues associated with work-life balance feel an impressive 67 per cent.
Unilever will commence the trial from the 14th of November this year, running for 12 months. This announcement comes as major trials of the four-day week are occurring worldwide, and following massive shifts in how we work as a result of the pandemic.
But we may soon see many other Australian employers following the move. Not necessarily because they want to, but rather because they are finding themselves out of other options.
The four-day week may fast become the hottest accessory for attaining the best possible talent. Surely, any firm that competes with Unilever for talent must be considering how this latest announcement will impact the applications they will be able to procure for job openings.
But adopting this form of working is not merely a matter of creating more “off” hours and days. It may increasingly become necessary for helping team members to respond to current challenges that look set to continue well into the future.
One such challenge is burnout, with Mercer’s recent global study finding that 81 per cent of employees are worried about burnout in 2022. Does the four-day week solve this? According to early results into four-day week studies (including Unilever’s own trial in New Zealand mentioned above), it can help.
Another challenge is in the rising cost of living, seeing employees spending more on everything from petrol to transport, food and of course things associated with the needs and responsibilities they have at home, including support for all forms of care.
But a less immediately obvious challenge impacting employees — which large employers should fast get on their radar — are the pressures facing the care sector, especially in childcare, where parents are increasingly being turned away from centres and/or asked to pull back on the days and hours they need, due to centre staff shortages.
There were a massive 7000 job vacancies across the childcare sector in September, according to National Skills Commission data. Childcare operators are concerned the problem will only get worse going into 2023. With high rates of burnout and a desire to leave the sector being recorded by early childhood workers and educators, we can expect vacancies to further grow – with predictions published today that there could be 10,000 vacancies by July.
We know that early childhood workers and educators are seriously undervalued and underpaid – addressing pay is the most important step in working to alleviate staff shortages and retain those who already have the skills, education and experience in this sector. We also know the value of these early years of education for children.
But those employers who rely on the childcare sector in order to get the staff they need to be able to put in the hours they believe are required to meet a traditional idea of a “full time” workload must also see the urgency of the issue. Four day work weeks and more flexibility is one way to support staff in potentially pulling back from at least one day of childcare.