Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

The ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have forced us to adapt to new rou­tines and live the new norm. On Tues­day, with the re­open­ing of schools, we will re­turn to the old nor­mal but the ef­fects of the lock­down and the COVID fa­tal­i­ties would have brought about some psy­cho­log­i­cal changes. Some may thread through the world be­ing cau­tious, oth­ers at­tack­ing life with a new pas­sion, while a few may ques­tion the val­ues of their past rou­tines.

We are see­ing a shift in the work ethos of some, who see the im­por­tance of a healthy work-life bal­ance as now vi­tal to them. Some­times it takes a big dis­rup­tor to dis­lodge deeply em­bed­ded so­ci­etal and cul­tur­al work norms.

For some, the con­cept of “Live to Work” has giv­en way to “Work to Live,” with a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for hob­bies, fam­i­ly and friends.

Even be­fore the pan­dem­ic, there was a push for work­style re­form. Per­sons suf­fered from burnout, some­times due to the long hours at work or hav­ing greater fam­i­ly com­mit­ments, and need­ing to spend time with chil­dren or ail­ing par­ents.

Ice­land had im­ple­ment­ed a re­duced work­week, with 86 per cent of their work­ers now work­ing few­er days. Fri­days be­came an op­tion­al work­day. Work­ers re­port­ed less burnout and no neg­a­tive ef­fects on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty were seen. A win-win sit­u­a­tion for all.

The pan­dem­ic has re­sult­ed in some per­sons quit­ting their jobs, which has been re­ferred to as the great res­ig­na­tion and some em­ploy­ers have to adopt work in­cen­tives to halt this ex­o­dus.

Most peo­ple work eight hours per day, 40 hours a week, and more than 2,000 hours per year.

We know that re­duc­ing the work­ing hours pro­vides bet­ter phys­i­cal and men­tal health for work­ers but em­ploy­ers who are in busi­ness to in­crease their prof­it mar­gin would need to be con­vinced to do so. No one can blame a com­pa­ny strug­gling to sur­vive op­pos­ing the propo­si­tion of pay­ing the same for few­er work­ing hours.

In 2015, Pen­cav­el, J H pub­lished The Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of Work­ing Hours, which il­lus­trat­ed an in­crease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty seen when work­ers had short­er work hours (the ‘less is more’ phe­nom­e­non), due to those with work­er at­tri­tion re­cov­er­ing from fa­tigue and ar­riv­ing for work more rest­ed and with greater en­er­gy.

I am hop­ing the post-pan­dem­ic fu­ture of work could in­clude the op­tion of four or five-hour work­days, four-day work­weeks and stag­gered sched­ules where peo­ple can choose based on their lifestyle needs, in ad­di­tion to the op­tion for re­mote and hy­brid mod­els.

John Trougakos, a pro­fes­sor of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al be­hav­iour at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to who sup­ports re­duced hours, said a per­son's en­er­gy can­not be sus­tained for eight hours straight and many work­ers waste time scrolling through so­cial me­dia, shop­ping on­line, or send­ing texts some­times, with up to 2.5 hours a day cy­ber­loaf­ing.

We are see­ing a grow­ing glob­al trend to­wards re­duced hours. Bel­gian work­ers now have a choice of a four-day week and the right to ig­nore work-re­lat­ed mes­sages af­ter work hours. Com­pa­nies in Por­tu­gal with more than 10 work­ers would give the par­ents of chil­dren un­der eight years the right to work from home. Wales has a tri­al of the four-day work­ing week which al­so aims to re­duce the coun­try's car­bon foot­print, Wales's fu­ture gen­er­a­tions com­mis­sion­er So­phie Howe said, “COVID-19's im­pact on em­ploy­ment and men­tal health meant it was the per­fect time to try this al­ter­na­tive way of work­ing.”

Spain is as­sist­ing com­pa­nies' costs to pay work­ers for their few­er days, which would be cov­ered by the gov­ern­ment. In the Philip­pines, The Civ­il Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (CSC) pro­posed a re­duced work­week in the pub­lic sec­tor. The Cal­i­forn­ian leg­is­la­ture is present­ly de­bat­ing the Thir­ty-Two-Hour Work­week Act aimed at re­duc­ing the stan­dard work­week to 32 hours.

So soon it's good­bye Fri­day.

Com­pa­nies with 500 or more em­ploy­ees would be sub­ject to the law, which would ap­ply to 20% of Cal­i­for­nia's work­force, the bill would not ap­ply to work­ers who are rep­re­sent­ed by a union and cov­ered by a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment. The mover of the bill, Chris­tine Gar­cia, said, “Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, over 47 mil­lion em­ploy­ees left their job look­ing for bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties, they’re send­ing a clear mes­sage they want a bet­ter work-life bal­ance — they want bet­ter emo­tion­al and men­tal health, and this is part of that dis­cus­sion."

The Cal­i­for­nia Cham­ber of Com­merce men­tioned that this bill would make hir­ing more ex­pen­sive and the in­crease in labour costs will re­duce busi­ness­es' abil­i­ty to hire or cre­ate new po­si­tions and will there­fore lim­it job growth.

We need to bal­ance the well-be­ing of our na­tion and fol­low trends that seem ben­e­fi­cial to our peo­ple.

To­day I wish a pleas­ant Good Fri­day to all.