One of Ireland’s leading experts on the four day working week, Margaret Cox, said there is a ‘ ’fundamental misunderstanding’’ among many businesses and employees about what it is and how it works in practice.
Margaret is the Director of recruitment firm ICE Group, the first Irish company to fully implement the four day working week. In 2019, along with her colleague Felim McDonnell, she wrote a book about the four-day week and our experiences in introducing it.
According to Margaret, many businesses and employees do not fully understand the concept.
‘’In recent days there has been a lot of debate about the 4-day working week. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is. It is all about being more focused and productive in four days so that you can have an extra day off. The idea is essentially to get five days of work done in four days. This means staff have more time off and come back to work refreshed, re-energised and happier. It is not about employees being lazy or not wanting to work, which is always the criticism of the 4-day working week. All the evidence shows that it actually improves productivity while making employees happier.’’
‘’A good example is that this is a four day week with St Patrick’s Day is on Friday, but that doesn’t mean we are all 20% less productive this week. We shouldn’t be afraid of new ways of thinking about how we work. There is a substantial and growing body of evidence that shows a four-day working week is good for employers, employees, productivity, mental health, work-life balance, recruitment and staff retention. An enormous amount of research has gone into the four-day week and the evidence is overwhelmingly positive. We became the first Irish company to adopt the four-day week in 2019 and have seen a 27% increase in productivity. Our staff are happier and more focused at work," Ms Cox asserted.
ICE Group commenced operations in 1972, starting out as a recruitment agency and secretarial service. It has since evolved into a leading firm providing a wide range of training, recruitment, HR and consultancy services to clients across the world.
