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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Fear and Greed summer series. I'm Sean Almer.

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Speaker 1: Today I'm talking to Simon kusten Maher, co founder and

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Speaker 1: director at the Demographics Group about gen X's dirty fantasy,

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Speaker 1: the four day work week. Simon, welcome back to Fear

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Speaker 1: and Greed.

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Speaker 2: It's great to be honest, great to talk about the

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Speaker 2: forgotten generation.

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Speaker 1: Well, and I'm part of the forgotten generation. And what

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Speaker 1: upsets me with the premise here is that you're suggesting

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Speaker 1: all our dirty fantasy is a four day work week.

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Speaker 1: When did we become so boring, Simon? When did we

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Speaker 1: lose the zest for life that it's all about work? Well,

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Speaker 1: so it's never been all about work for gen X

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Speaker 1: at all. Gen X of course, saw their parents work

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Speaker 1: themselves to death, and gen X saw was the first

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Speaker 1: generation that saw their moms enter the workforce at scale.

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Speaker 1: So therefore you created in gen X this absolute obsession

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Speaker 1: with work life balance, with ensuring that you get the

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Speaker 1: most out of life, not just by maximizing your income

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Speaker 1: through working constantly, but also to ensure that you have

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Speaker 1: enough time to actually enjoy all the good things that

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Speaker 1: the world has to offer, and that of course ultimately

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Speaker 1: now that gen X enters the top leadership positions. Gen

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Speaker 1: X is in the mid fifties now, and that is

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Speaker 1: the time of the life cycle when we hand over

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Speaker 1: the top C suite type jobs, when we hand over

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Speaker 1: prime ministerships and so forth. Okay, so that ford I

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Speaker 1: work week. Then I know that you've been slightly cynical

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Speaker 1: on that one, Simon what does the evidence suggest?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? So I always thought. We discussed in a previous

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Speaker 2: episode that we run out of workers in Australia demographically speaking,

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Speaker 2: and we know what a system does when it runs

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Speaker 2: out of workers, It works the remaining staff to death.

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Speaker 2: And I'm saying this is the wrong decade to call

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Speaker 2: for a four day work week, where, of course de

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Speaker 2: fantasy is that you work for four days instead of

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Speaker 2: five days, but you still get the five days worth

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Speaker 2: of pay and you magically remain as productive as you

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Speaker 2: were beforehand. That seemed too good to be true for

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Speaker 2: me as a bit of a cynic myself. And then

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Speaker 2: I looked at the data, because that's my job, so

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Speaker 2: I figured let's have a look, and worldwide, all the

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Speaker 2: trial data about the four day work week is surprisingly optimistic.

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Speaker 2: So the best case study probably comes from Britain who

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Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two ran this big study where sixty

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Speaker 2: one companies across the multitude of sectors. They ran this

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Speaker 2: for a little while and turns out that this actually worked.

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Speaker 2: That these firms had their productivity either stagnate so they

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Speaker 2: stayed stable or maybe even improved. Only for few it

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Speaker 2: went down, which is pretty remarkable. If you work less

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Speaker 2: a few hours and they light it. The employees are happy,

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Speaker 2: less stress, fewer sick days, better work life balance. So

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Speaker 2: it seems too good to be true.

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Speaker 1: And just explain that why it worked, because I know

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Speaker 1: there was it studies in Japan as well, similar outcomes.

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Speaker 1: Why is it You said few a sick days? So

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Speaker 1: you're alluded to why it worked?

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Speaker 2: Well, what part of this is that people just seem

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Speaker 2: to recover more and you come to the office or

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Speaker 2: the workplace in a more relaxed fashion and you can

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Speaker 2: then you can then exercise better or you well, exercise

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Speaker 2: is actually the the metaphor the gym metaphor. You can't

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Speaker 2: work out at full maximum capacity seven days a week.

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Speaker 1: That's impossible.

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Speaker 2: So if you want to lift heavy, you lift heavy

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Speaker 2: once or twice a week, and maybe you do a

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Speaker 2: bit of other lifting days throughout the week. You can't

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Speaker 2: go full steam ahead all the time. We know this

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Speaker 2: from exercise, and this same is the case intellectually speaking.

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Speaker 2: So okay, so maybe we can paste this better and

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Speaker 2: we give people a bit more time off to actually

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Speaker 2: recuperate so that there are more productive at work. That

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Speaker 2: is pretty good, But so does that mean that we

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Speaker 2: are facing a decade or decades now of four day

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Speaker 2: work weeks. And I'm still skeptical about this because we

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Speaker 2: must remember that for all of those trials, these companies

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Speaker 2: weren't randomly selected. These companies volunteered. These are companies where

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Speaker 2: where the top leadership at the whole company was behind

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Speaker 2: this idea from the get go. So there is a

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Speaker 2: bit of a selection bias in this study to begin with.

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Speaker 2: And of course, these studies showed that there were a

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Speaker 2: couple of industries where this didn't work. And these were

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Speaker 2: sectors where you need around the clock coverage. So these

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Speaker 2: are hospitals and pilots and so yet all those things

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Speaker 2: we just need people on the ground physically, you need

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Speaker 2: constant cover, and that didn't work then. And so if

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Speaker 2: I'm looking at the whole workforce, the medical system, Therefore

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Speaker 2: it is probably kind of ruled out of this the

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Speaker 2: care system, you know, the massive increase in the edge

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Speaker 2: care system, that's probably not an option for them as well.

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Speaker 2: Podcasting every day definitely we need you guys on seven

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Speaker 2: days a week.

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Speaker 1: That's right, not an option. But the interesting thing though

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Speaker 1: is that, like as you're talking, so you know, whether

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Speaker 1: Australia adopts it or not, there may be certain sectors

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Speaker 1: which over could adopt it, and over time people could

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Speaker 1: migrate towards those sectors or away from them, depending on

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Speaker 1: how they want to treat work life balance and things

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Speaker 1: like that. But there could be some sectors in Australia

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Speaker 1: that could adopt it exactly.

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Speaker 2: And you want to think about those places that could

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Speaker 2: adopt it, they might have a significant competitive advantage over

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Speaker 2: their you know, their their fellow businesses in this industry.

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Speaker 2: If they offer same pay for four days, that is

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Speaker 2: a very very attractive proposition in a time where we

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Speaker 2: run out of workers and we're therefore the worker has

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Speaker 2: more leverage than they've done in the past.

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Speaker 1: Soimon, thank you for talking to Fearing read summer series.

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Speaker 2: That's been my pleasure.

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Speaker 1: There was Simon kusten Maha from the Demographics Group Don't

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Speaker 1: forget to follow on the podcast, I'm Sean Almer and

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Speaker 1: this is Fear and Greed summer series