The four-day workweek
August 21, 2008
With increasing energy costs and a growing impetus to cut costs, Chrysler is in talks with unions about shifting to a four-day workweek of 10 hour days at some of its plants in North America. The change would allow the company to shut down the factory for three who
le days, bringing significant savings on electricity. Employees would get Friday, Saturday and Sunday off.
This is an interesting example of one of an innovative industry innovating around working hours. I often wonder what lessons can be learned from automobile manufacturers and applied to other industries. I know I thouched on Toyota and Kaizen earlier this week, and another practice it does in its factories is have an andon cord hanging overhead on both sides of every production line.
When a worker sees a problem, they pull the cord, which immediately stops their particular production line.
The almost complete lack of anxiety around stopping production with the andon cord has huge advantages. Only about 15 to 20 minutes of a full nine-hour shift are lost, and the defect rate on finished cars is close to zero, Toyota says.
Still the four-day workweek is set to stir a lot of debate before anything is agreed.
I think it will be interesting to see how this works out. It would certainly help many people solve that work/life balance issue. I would definitely put in 2 extra hours a day in favour of another day off. I dare say most companies outside of manufacturing won’t support this. They already get an hour or 2 unpaid work out of most people a day. It is an expectation if the employee is serious about work progression. Sad but true. They wouldn’t be able to get this with a 4 day working week.
imagine PR with the andon cord – sorry guys but this is all pointless, let’s not invoice the client this month! Ah the joys of a post modern career!