There is a shortage of workers here, and a reduction in weekly working hours is required there. Sounds like a contradiction? Only if you don’t recognize what’s obvious.
Fridays have been free at Goekeler Messtechnik for four years now. Through short-time work during the pandemic, the family business from the Stuttgart suburbs found that it was able to “enormously increase” its efficiency with a four-day week. Goekeler tested different models and reduced the weekly working hours from 40 to 34 hours with the same pay.
Managing director Timo Gökeler sums up the annual evaluations of the working time model: The numbers are good, the employees are satisfied and sickness levels are well below average.
“On Mondays they come in visibly relaxed and work highly efficiently,” says the family business owner, who also emphasizes that shorter working hours cannot be introduced hastily without first adapting the work processes to them.
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This was done with the help of the employees, and this is how the shorter working week works in terms of personnel and economically – also with a view to international competition.
The DGB motto: “More pay, more free time, more security”
Companies like Goekeler Messtechnik are already demonstrating what the German Federation of Trade Unions has chosen as the motto for this year’s rallies on May 1st: “More wages, more free time, more security”. This is not just met with approval. More free time also means less work. How is this supposed to work if there is a shortage of workers and skilled workers everywhere?
The purely mathematical and therefore obvious answer is: That doesn’t work. But that falls short: people are not calculations, but living beings with goals, hopes – and limits. When, in view of the work being done, “We finally have to work more again” echoes from politicians as well as from business and employer associations, it triggers a feeling of disruption.
On the one hand, with the call for greater willingness to perform, the welfare and woe of economic prosperity is shifted from the structural to the individual. But they already often lack time for family, leisure, volunteer work and political commitment.
Most of those who cannot work full-time cannot do so due to illness, disability, training and further education and personal and family obligations, as the Federal Institute for Population Research has determined. Women in particular therefore work part-time to look after children and those in need of care – it would be the task of politicians to take countermeasures here.
Germany is aging, many people are at their limits
Germany is – and this is also underplayed by the call for more performance – an aging and fundamentally exhausted society. Since Corona at the latest it has been clear: many people are at their physical limits. More and more people are sleeping poorly because of professional and private stress. As a result, the risks of chronic illnesses are increasing.
Last year, sickness rates were at record levels. On average, employees were absent from work for 20 days, mainly due to colds and mental illnesses such as depression and burnout. Musculoskeletal diseases also increased.
Historically, people in Germany are working more productively than ever, even though the gross domestic product fell by 0.3 percent last year compared to the previous year – because of sickness-related absences from work, as a study on sickness absence concluded. Companies, health insurance companies and the tax authorities would have lost billions.
The debate about workload and working hours should therefore focus much more than before on how work is designed in such a way that people can enjoy it and do it well for as long as possible. This includes the experiences of companies that have introduced shorter weekly working hours on a trial basis.
Productivity increases, mood improves
Most people stick with it even after the experiment because, as with Goekeler, it turns out that employees are happier, work more intensively, cope better with their everyday lives, are less stressed and get sick less often. Studies have long shown that productivity increases with shorter working hours. What could increase dramatically with a completely new, AI-supported digitalization.
Of course, this cannot be applied to all industries and professional groups. You can’t control a train more efficiently, and full-time nursing staff can hardly handle the care of those in need of care. But that is not an argument for leaving everything as it is.
Since the most recent GDL collective bargaining agreement for train drivers, rigid working hours have also been crumbling on the railways. And anyone who fundamentally dismisses shorter working hours as impractical fails to recognize how necessary it is to restructure work practices.
Fewer working days make you happier
If dusty processes and meetings are checked for their usefulness, this not only saves time but also makes work more fun.
According to the Work Happiness Report, people who have a four-day week are happiest with their jobs. This does not necessarily have to be accompanied by shorter working hours: 25hours Hotels has been offering the option of a four-day week for cleaning staff, reception staff and management positions in the Germany, Austria and Switzerland region for two years with the same full-time working hours.
“We have had very good experiences with it,” said Francesca Schiano, managing director of the 25hours Hotel Bikini Berlin and: “I can absolutely recommend the four-day week.” More than 80 percent of the workforce accepted the offer and is following suit more motivated at work.
This should make people sit up and take notice all the more because a sustainable economy is already dependent on making working life as pleasant as possible for Generation X and those following. Reducing bureaucracy can help shorten lengthy processes and make work more efficient. This then enables new work models across the board that are compatible with, and even value, private life.