{"id":73093,"date":"2022-10-27T07:44:28","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T05:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/?p=73093"},"modified":"2022-10-27T07:44:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T05:44:28","slug":"health-implications-for-employees-of-a-four-day-workweek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/health-implications-for-employees-of-a-four-day-workweek\/","title":{"rendered":"Health implications for employees of a four-day workweek"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neelam Rahim<\/em> |\u00a0neelam@radioislam.co.za<\/a><\/p>\n

3 min read | 7:43 am CAT<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A South African company, IQbusiness, is one of the first businesses in the country to participate in a 4-Day Week work pilot programme. According to this concept, employees will put in the same number of hours but work only four days a week and still receive their full pay and benefits. The standard for decades has been an eight-hour day and forty or forty-five hours a week. There are now proposals for reducing hours with work fatigue and efficiency key factors.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Radio Islam International<\/em>, Head of Healthcare Leadership at Stellenbosch Business School, Prof Renata Schoeman, believes it is time to discuss fewer working days.<\/p>\n

According to Prof Schoeman, it is an international trend that people are moving toward with clear evidence that it might increase productivity and mental well-being.<\/p>\n

She suggests a possible challenge may be to generalise it to the South African context and across industries, including organisations.<\/p>\n

Crucial to acknowledge is the four-day week is a reduced number of hours per week which requires a peak in efficiency, which might not be suitable for everyone.<\/p>\n

However, regarding mental health, Prof Schoeman said a four-day workweek might help make it more accessible for people to pay attention to self-care daily.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as per Prof Schoeman, the hybrid environment is most likely ideal, which can be adjusted to what works for people.<\/p>\n

“The hybrid model broader long is that we have more flexibility in working hours. A plan can be started surrounding the rhythm of people and also accommodate personal needs whilst still maintain productivity,” she says.<\/p>\n

The danger of working from home is the lack of boundary prepping; it might aggravate the situation of working more hours a day.<\/p>\n

Prof Schoeman further advises there is no answer on reducing either fewer working hours or days as it is industry specific.<\/p>\n

Organisations have a corporate mental health responsibility but need to implement employee self-care.<\/p>\n

“It will great be if we can save in polluting time and travel expenses for people, but still cannot be applied across industries,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neelam Rahim |\u00a0neelam@radioislam.co.za 3 min read | 7:43 am CAT A South African company, IQbusiness, is one of the first businesses in the country to participate in a 4-Day Week work pilot programme. According to this concept, employees will put in the same number of hours but work only four days a week and still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[132,31,5453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion-and-analysis","category-podcasts","category-social"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pc0QIf-j0V","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-16 12:52:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}