After the pandemic came the rising popularity of hybrid work. Now four-day working weeks are in – so have our work habits changed for good?
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The workplace is constantly evolving. Take the last fifty years – numerous mainstays have parted ways with the working world.
Filing cabinets exchanged for sleek Excel spreadsheets; pen and paper swapped for trusty Microsoft Word; factory workers whittled down as automated machinery moves seamlessly through complicated processes. When one thing becomes outdated or can no longer keep up with the demands of our ever-rapid world, a new shiny thing – like the internet, robots or AI – swoops in to help.
Even something seemingly requiring a pair of human eyes and brain to do, like minute-taking – an activity that could easily wipe out an afternoon’s work – can now be done by the omnipresent AI bot dutifully recording your work’s Monday morning meeting.
Now, the world – like it always does – has turned another corner, this time altering the very framework of how we have long characterised ‘work’: a commute, twice-daily, to a workplace, where tasks are carried out five days a week.
Five years ago, that would have been a widely-accepted (albeit broad) definition of work in the modern world – but now, it’s both a little archaic, incorrect – and as we’re increasingly understanding, not always conducive to employee happiness or optimal business success.
There are exceptions to the rule, but since the pandemic, we’ve been largely plunged into a world of remote working. Increased automation, with the advances of AI becoming more and more accessible, have redefined work processes even more. Even a recalibration of our fundamental five-day working week has led to a widespread introduction of truncated (but increasingly productive) four-day weeks.
But are these work trends here to stay, or are they just fads that’ll soon blow over?
The rise of remote working
Prior to the pandemic, ‘WFH’ would seem nothing more than a jumble of letters – but today, it’s almost universally understood as an acronym for an increasingly normal part of a job: working from home.
Today, 16 per cent of companies across the world are fully remote. The US, Estonia and Portugal take the lead for companies operating entirely remotely. In the US, Austin and Denver are known as remote-friendly cities, while Portugal drives droves of digital nomads to its cities including Lisbon. In Estonia, e-Residency programmes allow business owners to run companies without being tied down to a particular location.
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It’s true that the pandemic accelerated the proportion of employees taking up some form of remote work – but almost five years on, and it has continued to remain a mainstay for a large proportion of people.
In recent data taken from the US’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2023 annual survey, the percentage of those doing some form of remote work was the same as back in 2022 – the first-ever stabilisation in the data since before the pandemic, and quite likely a sign that the trend is now becoming a norm. Now in the US, 58 per cent of job holders – equivalent to 92 million people – report they can work remotely at least part of the time.
In terms of the number of days that employees choose to work from home, Canada takes top spot with employees taking an average of 1.7 days per week, followed by United States (1.4), Germany (1.0), Netherlands (1.0), Singapore (0.9), and South Korea (0.4).
Although fully remote work is becoming a more popular reality for many, a blend of remote working combined with in-person office days – known as hybrid working – is rapidly gaining popularity. As of autumn 2024, 28 per cent of working adults in Great Britain were carrying out this blend.
It’s no wonder this lifestyle is a happy medium for many: working from home saves time on commuting, freeing up for exercise and rest – but having those all-important days in the office makes for easier collaboration with co-workers. In one study, respondents who worked from home on a given day spent an average of 24 minutes more on sleep and rest and 15 minutes more on exercise, sports and wellbeing, compared to those who worked away from home.
For women – especially those with childcare duties – such a flexible working arrangement is an even more important lifeline. In one survey, 38 per cent of mothers with young children have reported that without hybrid working, they would either have to reduce work hours or entirely leave their companies.
Whittling down the working week
One of the more radical shifts seen in recent years has been that of the four-day work week. Working four days per week can function in two different ways: either where the hours of a five-day week are compressed into four days, or where fewer hours are worked than the traditional five-day week but with no reduction in pay. In either case, the employee is whittling away one of those working days for the return of a luxurious three-day weekend.
Back in 2022, the UK was home to the largest four-day working week trial, running from June to December with 61 companies and almost 2,900 workers taking part. The results? Overwhelmingly successful.
Of the 61 companies, 56 continued with the four-day week (92 per cent), and 18 said it would be a permanent change. The revenue of companies stayed broadly the same across the trial period, and even increased by 35 per cent compared to similar previous periods.
Shorter workings hours also lead to happier employees. During the study, 39 per cent of employees were less stressed after taking part in the shorter working week, and 71 per cent had reduced levels of burnout. Balancing household jobs, relationships, social commitments and family also became easier for those taking part.
Elsewhere, other countries have also reported success in four-day working week trials. Unilever’s 18-month pilot in New Zealand offered major success – including revenue growth – while Iceland’s four-year long trial between 2015 and 2019 found the improved wellbeing of 2,500 employee participants. Over in Japan, Microsoft reported a 40 per cent productivity boost in its employees who took part in a four-day work week trial.
But despite its promising appeal, the four-day working week is not a reality that can be easily transposed onto all industries. For those companies which require staff to be present over seven days a week – like emergency services, public transport networks and logistics – the four-day working week is unfeasible.
However, for the majority of other sectors, the option to change the typical five days of working is becoming more and more likely: marking yet another shift in the way the global workforce is changing.
Automation & AI
It can be easy to feel conflicted about the ever-growing capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and AI, and their influence and impact upon the workplace. There are people on either side of the fence: those who believe that robots and automation will lead to increased production, benefit the economy and thus improve unemployment – and those concerned that automation will result in job losses and widening inequality. Whatever the hypothesis, be under no illusions: integration of technology like and AI and robots is not slowing in the workplace.
The rate at which countries are adopting AI in the workplace is rising across the world – back in 2023, India took number one spot (59 per cent), followed by United Arab Emirates (58 per cent), Singapore (53 per cent), China (50 per cent), UK (26 per cent) and the US (25 per cent).
While in the US, AI-powered tools like ChatGPT are used to streamline tasks such as customer service and content creation, South Korea uses the tools for manufacturing and robotics. In China, AI is used to optimise supply chains and logistics, particularly in its bustling megacities like Shanghai.
Using the technology, for the large part, then, may seem only a good thing – but recent research has highlighted the environmental drawbacks of utilising AI to such high levels. The large data centres used by AI emit vast swathes of greenhouse gas emissions: Google, Meta and Microsoft have all reported an uptick in their emissions since 2020, a trend that Google described as resulting from the ‘increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute’.
It’s not just greenhouse gases to be aware of, though – data centres also use staggeringly large quantities of water to cool themselves. Training Microsoft’s GPT-3 AI program for just two weeks in US data centres consumed the same amount of water – 700,000 litres – as in the manufacturing process of 370 BMW cars or 320 Tesla electric vehicles.
So while automation may be a step forward in many ways – allowing processes in the workplace to be completed with greater speed and accuracy – environmental considerations are at play as these new technologies become increasingly popular and companies create strategies to help mitigate these effects.
Robotics
Another tech that’s reshaping the workplace is robots. Although they may once have been confined to the four walls of a factory, robots now function in a wide range of countries and markets across the world, with the global robotics market valued at over $30 billion in 2023. Per 10,000 employees, South Korea has 1,012 robots – the highest industrial robot density in the world – followed by Singapore (770), China (470), Germany (429), Japan (419) and the US (295).
Japan now uses robots for caregiving and customer service purposes, while South Korea is using the technology to produce cleaning robots as well as education tools.
Their uses can also be for tedious jobs, like sorting, as well as dangerous activities. A robot recently developed by a research team at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), is named MARVEL. With magnetic foot pads that can be turned on and off, it can scale metal walls and perform inspections on tall structures like bridges, buildings and ships. Such an application opens up the possibility for repair work to be carried out without the typical expected disruptions like lane closures or diversions.
The working world, redefined
It’s clear we’ve transitioned into new styles of working – whether that’s using AI technologies to speed up processes, creating your own home office on those ‘WFH’ days or trialling out a four-day working week.
Many of these new ways of approaching the workplace are, for the time being, here to stay: the greater flexibility offered by hybrid working allows for a better work-life balance and is continually being enjoyed, post-pandemic – and the same principle applies to the four-day working week. AI and robots are also helping to streamline processes and are continually reshaping our understanding of how employees and technology can operate in tandem together.
But add another fifty years to the timeline, and all of these workplace shifts may be a thing of the past. The four-day working week may seem as archaic as the pen and paper; hybrid working like the filing cabinet; AI and robotics as we know them the clunky predecessors of some unfathomable technological breakthroughs.
Today’s advancements are exactly that – new, fresh ways of thinking about the world of work – but as the typewriter, the early-age of the internet and the fax machine remind us, the workplace stays far from static.
