The working week
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is our working week due for major reform? Will a move to a four day week - as proposed by the Labour Party in its recent General Election manifesto - ever happen? From shorter hours to more flexibility in the workplace, what will the modern world of work be like in ten years time? Evan Davis and guests discuss the latest trends.
Guests appearing on The Bottom Line
Kate Cooper, Head of Research, Policy & Standards, Institute of Leadership and Management David Stone, CEO of MRL Recruitment and Karen Jansen, Professor in Leadership Challenge at Henley Business School
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.1 | Hello and welcome to the programme. |
| 0:07.4 | Now, let's talk about Fridays. |
| 0:09.6 | I don't think it's my imagination, but it seems to me that as a working day, |
| 0:13.8 | Fridays are a little less busy than other weekdays, just observing the daily commute. |
| 0:19.3 | It seems that working patterns are slowly changing, |
| 0:22.5 | not for everyone, but for some people. And so today, we want to ask if the working week |
| 0:27.8 | is ready for more radical reform. Should we, as Labour proposed in the general election, |
| 0:33.2 | move towards a four-day week? Are there other changes that might make sense? So we'll ask whether |
| 0:38.9 | we should work less, whether that implies we take home less money, and whether the four-day week is the |
| 0:45.0 | right way to go to improve mental health and overall well-being. Now, just a fact to start us off, |
| 0:51.0 | the average full-time male employee works 39 hours a week in this country, |
| 0:57.5 | including overtime, which is about an hour less than it was in the early 1990s. Full-time women |
| 1:05.3 | tend to work less than men. That's more like an average of 35 hours a week. Well, I have three guests well qualified to |
| 1:12.3 | help us understand the Working Week. So let's briefly meet them now. First of all, Karen Jansen, |
| 1:17.3 | Professor in Leadership and Change at Henley Business School. And Karen, what's your interest? |
| 1:22.5 | What took you into thinking about the Working Week? I've been studying leadership and change for many years, |
| 1:29.0 | but we ran a study last year on the four-day work week and the four generations all being in |
| 1:34.1 | the workforce at the same time and found some interesting findings. So that's why I'm here. |
| 1:38.7 | Right. And you have some experience outside of the business school environment as well. |
| 1:43.6 | Yeah, I started my career at IBM, |
| 1:45.4 | so I've been in a real job before becoming an academic. A big corporate one. Okay. Also with me, |
... |
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