Why Greece’s Six-Day Workweek Gamble Will not Pay Off

Greece has simply launched a six-day workweek coverage, efficient July 1st, 2024, geared toward enhancing productiveness and combating its persistent unemployment points. As of Might 2024, Greece’s unemployment fee stands at 10.6%, exhibiting a decline from earlier years however nonetheless reflecting important financial challenges. The query for me stays whether or not one of the best ways to beat these challenges and optimize a working populace is by extending the workweek.

Though early into its life, the brand new coverage has sparked widespread debate. Will Greece see a increase in productiveness and enhance its financial situations, or does this selection have the next likelihood of stagnating the workforce additional and damaging work ethic and morale? Let’s discover each side of the coin.

The financial context

So, why is Greece ready requiring such a drastic change? The reply is pretty easy — Greece has confronted substantial financial hardships over the previous decade, significantly because the debt disaster within the early 2010s, which noticed unemployment charges soar to practically 28% in 2013.

Clearly unsustainable, Greece has executed an amazing job bringing the unemployment fee again right down to 10.6%, and this means restoration. Nonetheless, it is all relative. In actual fact, 10.6% stays one of many highest within the Eurozone. Greece’s authorities wanted to do extra, and this resolution to implement a six-day workweek was due to this fact pushed by a must stimulate financial exercise and cut back joblessness.

Associated: We Have A Predicament: Productiveness Is At An All-Time Low — And It is As a result of We’re Failing Staff In 2 Methods.

Execs of the six-day workweek

The primary chance is that the six-day workweek might result in greater total output. After all, by rising the variety of workdays, companies may obtain extra constant productiveness and cut back downtime. Companies maximize the utilization of their sources in a setup like this, each fiscally and personally. Nonetheless, whereas this further utilization may drive financial progress and a discount in unemployment, you’re additionally extra prone to expertise burnout within the group and drop morale. What’s the affect of this? A lower in productiveness.

There are lots of items to this puzzle. Some sectors, significantly these reliant on steady operations, may profit from the prolonged workweek. Extra workdays can translate to extra manufacturing and buyer engagement for industries like manufacturing and providers, which could assist companies get better sooner in a nonetheless fragile economic system.

Greece is seemingly clued up on this, as the brand new regulation will solely be legitimate for workers of personal companies and manufacturing crops that function 24 hours a day, together with sure retail and agricultural employees.

Moreover, the regulation (particularly Regulation 5053/2023), which was handed by parliament on the again finish of 2023, clarifies that the worker’s further day/hours are capped at 8 hours. Employers can even resolve whether or not a employee ought to are available in and work for this sixth day. There may be flexibility, which may very well be crucial to the tactic’s success. The incentives are additionally fairly important — workers can be paid 40% extra time for the wages masking the additional time.

Associated: Why ‘Quiet Fridays’ Are the First Step In the direction of a 4-Day Workweek

Downsides and options

Regardless of these potential advantages, it most undoubtedly will not be assured to be all sunshine and rainbows for Greece. Loads of analysis and sensible expertise means that extending the workweek may not be the best technique for reinforcing productiveness.

Longer working hours can result in worker burnout, decreased job satisfaction, and decrease total productiveness in the long run. A 2014 examine by Stanford College discovered that productiveness per hour declines considerably when the workweek exceeds 50 hours and drops off so sharply after 55 hours that there is no such thing as a level in working anymore.

Moreover, the standard of labor can endure when workers are overworked. Artistic and cognitive duties, that are essential in lots of trendy industries, are sometimes higher carried out with satisfactory relaxation and a balanced work-life schedule.

Clearly, all of us have totally different working kinds, however the present shift in the direction of distant and asynchronous work fashions advantages the workforce usually. Flexibility can enhance productiveness and worker well-being, as long as you select your workers rigorously.

Associated: Why Hybrid Work Is Failing Your Staff

Embracing trendy work practices

To steer on from that final level, we all know that Greece can not select its workers, and so it doesn’t have the posh of pinpointing particular industries or working strategies for particular personnel. Subsequently, it is sensible to implement a reasonably broad ‘repair,’ even when it isn’t all-inclusive.

What I’m wondering, although, is whether or not they may benefit extra from embracing trendy work practices that target flexibility, distant work, and asynchronous communication as methods to enhance output.

At Bubbles, we facilitate asynchronous communication and alter how colleagues have digital conferences. If constructing and utilizing Bubbles has taught me something, it is that updates, suggestions, and concepts don’t should be given inside the similar four-wall boundary. In actual fact, a faster, extra environment friendly approach entails being aside and being extra versatile.

Research have proven that dedication to asynchronous communication and collaboration has diminished the quantity of real-time conferences groups have by as much as 38%. Who is aware of what may occur by way of output if Greece have been to focus and put money into the effectivity of the present 40-hour workweek as an alternative of maintaining this largely related whereas solely boosting the period of time folks spend doing it.

To offer some constructive context to this rationale, we are able to have a look at corporations like Atlassian and Slack, which have reported greater worker satisfaction and productiveness by minimizing conferences and specializing in deliverables quite than hours labored.

I can perceive this concept totally, however whether or not the execution is right is one other matter. Whereas the choice is sensible inside Greece’s financial context, it’s essential to think about the potential long-term impacts on worker well-being and productiveness and, as such, the options for optimizing the present format of Greek working tradition and placing a stability between financial progress and morale.