Atop a building in my hometown sits a giant Dr. Pepper cap as if a clock face with only the numbers 10, 2, and 4 present. Now a landmark, the ad’s claim once encouraged employees to drink the soft drink at these times, supposedly the most lethargic hours of the workday.
The COVID-19 pandemic resurged the cry for another alleged productivity booster: working less.
On the surface, that sounds great—especially with the bold expectation of receiving full-time pay. But, is it economically feasible? Is it culturally realistic? And, for the Christian, is it biblical?
Business Insider marked 1866 as year one for our modern understanding of the workweek. It was then that a nascent labor union failed to have a law passed that would mandate eight-hour-work days, though they succeeded in stirring the public’s interest in labor reform. Three years later, President Grant enacted an eight-hour workday for government employees. There were also the mistakeable events of May Day and the Haymarket Affair in which strikers died for the cause of a shorter workday.
Ultimately, Henry Ford is seen as the father of the five-day, 9-to-5 grind when he instituted it at his automobile company for a two-fold purpose: “giv[ing] workers an extra day of recreation...would create the need to purchase more goods, including vehicles.” (Gaviola)
Not as pie-in-the-sky as a class presidential candidate promising no homework but just as hopeful, Platform London’s 4 Day Week Campaign is an image of the American argument for a shortened workweek:
“We invented the weekend a century ago and it's time for an update. Since the 1980s working hours have barely reduced at all, despite rising automation and new technology.”
To their disqualification, these proponents of the shortened workweek out themselves as company-time thieves in admitting they could finish all their required tasks in five hours or less (ABC News). Additionally, exaggerations abound as commutes round up to three hours and the recency of the modern workweek model round down from the Gilded Age to 1970. And one Forbes contributor hurriedly connected the national epidemics of divorce and suicide to the outsized time spent at the office.
An overhaul of the modern workweek mustn’t be justified by anecdotes and generalizations.
So, to their credit, not all reasons to restructure were so self-interested and qualitative. Platform London calculated that
“shifting to a four-day working week without loss of pay could shrink the UK’s carbon footprint by 127 million tonnes per year by 2025….more than the entire carbon footprint of Switzerland...equivalent to taking 27 million cars off the road...”
Linda Nazareth, host of the Work and the Future podcast, corroborated these environmental benefits facilitated by a shortened workweek but raised a cultural bridge we would have to cross for four-day workweeks to be the norm:
“[Currently w]e have this mindset that you have to be on all the time, particularly if you’re anything but a very junior worker.”
Indeed, there are more barriers and side effects to consider before adopting a shortened workweek.
As contrived as team-building exercises might feel, co-workers provide a camaraderie absent in our friends or family. If work were all about seeing our own genius produced and sold, we’d each be entrepreneurs. But even the linchpins of a company are social beings needing others. Some case studies have proved lack of office chit-chat decreases productivity.
At one marketing research company, staggered schedules (one proposed alternative to standard office hours) stalled projects since team members weren’t collaborating simultaneously (ABC News). At another company, to facilitate focused work, cell phones were locked away and social media was blocked. But this induced stress by hastening deadlines while seeming to elongate the workday as workers couldn’t communicate with their family on the outside. Finally, one employer testified that his employees got so used to the shorter days that three specifically lost their commitment to the company’s mission and quit (Kelly).
Yet, one large proof is repeatedly referenced by supporters of the shortened workweek: Iceland.
There, between 2015 and 2019, 2,500 full-time employees worked four and five hours less a week but were docked no pay. Those employees reportedly found themselves less at risk of burnout, experienced a healthier work-life balance, and were more able to keep house. The results of this national experiment were so overwhelming that “now 86% of Iceland's workforce have either moved to shorter hours for the same pay, or will gain the right to [do so]” (BBC).
Next on the watchlist is Spain which, encouraged by Iceland’s conclusions, is moving toward a four-day workweek as the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect employment. Time will tell how shortened work hours on top of the daily siestas affect that nation’s economy.
Whether the benefits outweigh the inconveniences, there are two disclaimers underlying this conversation.
One: you can’t wait tables from home. A shortened workday or staggered schedule isn’t a sensible model for some businesses. Imagine if the bank or post office were only available half as often as they are now. If everyone worked the same shortened hours, there’d be no customers. The economy relies on companies being open when others aren’t.
Two: “[T]he fact that we're able to debate the workweek at all is a true testament to how far workers [sic] rights have come since the 1800s.” (Ward and Lebowitz) This is a valid point but reveals a prejudice for working less, hinting at an unbiblical view of work at the heart of the shortened workweek movement.
While human nature isn’t necessarily lazy, it is self-serving (Eph 2:3). If we have an attitude that the only part of our life that matters is the one we live outside the office, we’ll want to stay outside the office.
But, work was ordained (Gen 2:15) before it was toilsome (Gen 3:17-19). Work, as with all of God’s creations in the six days, is good.
It is the modern negative connotation of a ‘job’ that tells us we are obliging someone with our time and skill set. We forget that we are not our own, that we were bought at a price (1 Cor 6:19-20). It is not that we are being paid enough to sell forty of our hours to a willing buyer; it is that we are spending our God-given allowance of a life as we aim to please him (2 Cor 5:9), and in the process, contributing to the well-being of others.
If your employer requires you to produce X number of widgets per day and you can finish that in less than eight hours, do so (with your employer’s permission) and then recognize you haven’t clocked out of service to God. If you sit at a desk fielding sporadic phone calls, remember you are ultimately serving the Lord (Col 3:22-24).
If you work weekends or nights, if you work from home, if you work on the road, if you’re self-employed, if you’re a cog in a machine, if you’re an intern, if you’re a CEO, “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Cor 15:58)
In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer says,
Certainly it is more important to lead a soul to Christ than to plant a garden, but the planting of the garden can be as holy an act as the winning of a soul...It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything.
With that mindset, the shortened workweek was never a biblical quandary. It is not the quantity of our output but the heart attitude we have wherever we are working that matters to God (Hos 6:6).