The four-day week is gaining ground in France, between employee well-being and business attractiveness

What if we only worked four days a week? After teleworking, which has largely developed since the Covid-19 pandemic, the idea of ​​reducing, not the working time, but the number of days on which it is carried out is gaining ground everywhere in Europe. In the United Kingdom, Spain or Belgium, many initiatives have been launched to test this organization.

In France, some pioneering companies allow their employees to work their thirty-five hours in four days.

According to the Ministry of Labor, around 10,000 employees are affected. The public sector is not left out of the movement: in Picardy, the agents of an Urssaf fund were offered this possibility, in March. An experiment announced by Gabriel Attal in the daily newspaper Opinion1^er FEBRUARY. “I believe that many French people today aspire to work differently”, underlined the minister delegate in charge of public accounts, while the government was facing a major social mobilization against the pension reform and the postponement of the legal retirement age to 64 years.

The European Commissioner for Employment and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, for his part, called, in an interview with the Portuguese agency Lusa published on May 25, on companies to deploy the measure to be more attractive on the market. work, arguing that “the new generations have a certain vision of the balance between work and personal life”. Message heard, at least in Lyon, where the 9,600 employees of the city will switch to 1^er september. With what consequences?

Happier employees… in general

At a time when the quality of life at work and the prevention of psychosocial risks are the alpha and omega of a good manager, having tasks formerly spread over five days accomplished in four days may seem at best absurd, at worst totally deleterious. However, the feedback – to be taken with reserve, however, since it comes from voluntary, even voluntarist companies – rather points in the direction of betterment for employees.

Elmy, a small Lyon-based company specializing in energy management, experimented with a four-day week for six months, with executives working thirty-five hours and employees thirty-two hours. Obviously, the work has intensified: the daily break times have gone from almost forty minutes to thirty-four, and the lunch break has been shortened by half an hour to ten past one.

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