Portugal will test a four-day week with a pilot project in private companies that will start in 2023
According to the design of the pilot project to be presented by the Government at the Wednesday meeting of the Standing Commission for Social Action – the one that the pilot phase had – only in a “second access to the concert phase”, and “through an agency Lu in the evolution of the pilot today”, that of the four-day weekday “should be inclusion in the public sector”.
This, according to the executive, is a pilot experience that requires the adaptation of instruments to impacts and that may differ from the assessment of defined legal and budgetary constraints.
“Progress and in a third moment there is an intention to create as conditions, to test an almost very high model, that can be designed for a group of companies will adopt perimental control”, in a design that a group of companies will adopt again control if document is made Government.
So, the initially limited private sector companies, the four-day pilot experience will last for months and will be “voluntary and reversible”, not having as sole financial participants from the State, which will only provide “technical and administrative support for transition”. .
According to the executive, the experience “cannot imply a salary reduction and must imply a reduction in the hours of the week”.
Since the State cannot be hired for an agreed hour, it cannot be a number of hours of the week, 34 hours, 36 hours, experience not contracted by agreement between exact weekly – “but it has it in agreement” – but the stipulation to “involve the majority of workers” of the company, “except companies, where it can be tested in only a few establishments or departments”.
The project schedule foresees that in the coming months, the 2023 pilot, periods of expression of interest by the part will take place until the clarification sessions for the “explainers how the study will proceed”, in part the selection of participants scheduled for February next year. year.
Between March and May, the pilot experience will be prepared, which will then start in June and last until November. During the period of December 2023, “a period of reflection” will take place, during which “the will reflect on an experience and determine if they will maintain a new organization, the five-day management week, or adopt a hybrid model”.
The Government also establishes that, if less than 40 companies join the pilot project, it will be carried out with all of them. Whether adherence to company control will be a more robust assessment of treatment in two groups – which will allow for “the four-day effects groups”.
Although admitting that the fact that this experience from a self-selection of companies “can send the results”, the executive believes that the results of the pilot project are results.
According to the Government, the evaluation of the pilot project “will focus on the effects of the four-day week on workers and companies”.
On the workers side, “the effects on the well-being of quality of life, mental and physical health, as well as their level of commitment, job satisfaction and intention to remain in the organization” will be medium, and “Studying the use of of workers’ time on rest days, to understand where and how unworked time is used”.
On the companies side, “the generic focus will be on productivity, competitiveness, intermediate costs and profits”, evaluating “the effects on short and long-term absenteeism rates, on recruitment processes, on the organization of interns, on financial and non-financial performance indicators (for example, customer/user problems), in the incidence of work accidents and without intermediate goods, either raw consumption or energy expenditure”.
The evaluation will be carried out through surveys (before and after the experience), which “will be designed to be comparable with other international experiences, but adapted to the Portuguese reality”, and the objectives generated in these surveys will be crossed with the bases of official data”.
The pilot experience of the four-day week will be coordinated by Pedro Gomes, author of the book “Friday is the New Saturday”, with Rita Fontinha, associate professor of ‘Strategic Human Resource Management’ at the Henley Business School of the University of Reading, in the team outside the executive.