Can work become less about the when, the where, the how much?

Questions swirl around how some kinds of work should get done. There’s debate over on-site staff versus remote or hybrid. Then there’s the workweek. Can it drop to four days? Does that mean five days’ work in 20% less time – or giving employees some time back?

Laurent Belsie, who covers business trends for the Monitor, joined with writers Erika Page and Shafi Musaddique to explore.

“It’s not a new trend,” Laurent says of the push for a shorter week. But the pandemic accelerated it, he tells Samantha Laine Perfas,  and brought forward questions that have been brewing.

A big piece: balance. “People are finding all kinds of ways to use their extra time off to do amazing and engaging things,” Laurent says. He and his reporting partners spoke to one woman who now paints with her older father on her extra day.

Studies are mixed on the effect on productivity, Laurent notes. But the four-day week is also framed by some as a way of improving work.

“The innovation that I was seeing was people thinking about how to incorporate and encourage ‘deep work,’” Laurent says. That’s the focused, highly productive work that kicks in after time-eating tasks like managing email. More compressed work for a more compressed week? Some begin to see the makings of a win-win.