AlgoaFM News
A pilot project to introduce a four-day working week at companies in South Africa starts this year after it was successfully introduced in several other countries.
The aim is to pay workers their full salaries while they are only required to work 80% of the time while maintaining the same productivity levels as a 'normal' week.
Senior Associate and employment lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills in Johannesburg, Jacqui Reed, says there are benefits and concerns with this kind of working model.
She told AlgoaFM News that studies have found that there is an increase in productivity and efficiencies from employees.
She says other benefits include a better work and life balance as employees have more time to spend with family while there is also a notable improvement of mental and physical health.
She says other employers have noted an increase in profitable gains.
Reed says although it seems positive, employers would need to carefully consider the labour implications especially for the different sectors.
"The legalities around the four day work week are that there are contracts in place that deal with working hours of an employee and how many days a week a worker is required to work for."
She says there are also sectorial determinations that are set and a review of this legislation would probably be necessary.
Asked whether employers would be able to reduce remuneration based on this new model she said remuneration is a term of employment, and employers who wish to reduce remuneration cannot simply do it without an agreement from the employee.
She says employers would also need to develop strict performance indicators as a reduction of the working week would not necessarily mean a reduction of the workload.
Asked if this working model would work in a country like South Africa with high levels of loadshedding, she said companies could negotiate with Eskom on when it would be better suited to be loadshed.
"The difficulty of this working model is that it is it is very limited to your corporate environment and would be difficult to convince small businesses," she added.
