Four Days a Week

The Beatles once sang Eight Days a Week, which meant love, but some people only want to do it four times a week, i.e., work. Indeed a few enterprises introduced the four-day workweek in Germany.

Most approaches don't reduce the number of working hours but distribute them over four instead of five days resulting in an additional weekday that can be used entirely for leisure activities. Some enterprises couple the four days with additional flexibility in how those working hours are spent during a day.

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Three days off, four days at work is tested in the UK in a pilot trial and is also desired by an increasing number of people in Germany. Almost 63 percent would welcome the concept of a four-day week with full pay compensation, 14 percent even without compensation.

One driving force behind the acceptance is that people not only want to work but like to balance their private lives while still earning a good income.

The older generation, for whom the promise of a first job often triggered tears of gratitude, mourns the apparent declining work ethic.

©imago/PhotoAlto/MDR

Indeed, there are fewer younger people, and they have become more selective. They are no longer interested in careers for which they have to work themselves to death. An acceptable work-life balance is their mantra.

This is not only true for academic professions but likewise for bakeries. Young people no longer feel like getting up early; nurses are less willing to work shifts in hospitals etc. Nowadays, younger people are even turning down job offers because they first want to travel around the world for six months or can't take their dog to the office.

O tempora, o mores?

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