{"id":1303,"date":"2025-10-16T21:27:50","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/?p=1303"},"modified":"2025-10-16T21:27:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:27:50","slug":"nice-short-working-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/settimana-lavorativa-piace-corta\/","title":{"rendered":"Work week: short is nice!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In recent years, the idea of reducing the working week from five to four days has gained more and more space in the public debate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It embraces the broader concept of\u00a0<strong>wellbeing,<\/strong>\u00a0i.e. the physical, mental and emotional well-being of employees within a company, and is a proposal that intersects mental health, productivity, sustainability and organisational innovation. In Italy, giants such as Intesa Sanpaolo, Luxottica, Lamborghini and Sace, as well as HR service companies, are experimenting with a Monday-Thursday week with equal pay, focusing on the benefits that come with it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In particular, it is recorded:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li><u>rediscovered psychophysical well-being<\/u>\u00a0in employees and co-workers, with less stress, reduced burnout, better work-life balance;<\/li>\n<li><u>increased productivity<\/u>motivated and satisfied people improve in commitment, efficiency and attachment to the company;<\/li>\n<li><u>reduction in absenteeism<\/u>With the short week, sick days decrease.<\/li>\n<li><u>attraction and loyalty<\/u>\u00a0of personnel: it is a clear plus for companies in the competitive labour market;<\/li>\n<li><u>lower turnover<\/u>A positive working environment is attractive, reduces resignations and new costs related to finding and training new resources;<\/li>\n<li><u>gender equality<\/u>The short week can favour a more balanced distribution of household and family tasks.<\/li>\n<li><u>eco-sustainability<\/u>lower energy consumption (fewer operating days), better quality of life, positive impact on mobility and the environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Europe and the rest of the world, the short week is increasingly seen as the best compromise towards a somewhat prioritised family-work balance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iceland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany have pilot projects, some have made it possible by national law (the Netherlands in 2022).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the Eurostat report shows us that EU citizens work an average of 36 hours, 1 hour less than in 2014.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Against the trend\u00a0<strong>Greece<\/strong>\u00a0which is preparing, in these hours, to vote on one of the most controversial labour reforms in Europe: the possibility of working up to 13 hours a day, a good 5 hours more per day, albeit paid at 40% more. A path not without obstacles and the trade unions, who are already speaking of an attack on workers' health and safety, are announcing battle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, despite the fact that the typicality of some sectors (health care, logistics) seems to argue against this modality, the main resistance from employers is the\u00a0<strong>cultural resistance<\/strong>habit of the \u201c5 days for 40 hours\u201d model, management concerns about efficiency, as well as response times to customers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>What is needed for it to work<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>Flexible models, not one size fits all. Some companies use the \u201ccompression\u201d model (more hours per day, fewer days), others reduce the total number of hours for the same salary.<\/li>\n<li>Dialogue with trade unions and company bargaining: to ensure that there are no abuses, that wages remain the same, that rights (breaks, maximum hours, shifts) are respected.<\/li>\n<li>Monitoring and data: effectiveness, productivity, staff satisfaction, economic impacts must be evaluated.<\/li>\n<li>Regulatory\/fiscal support: incentives for adopting innovative models, clear regulations.<\/li>\n<li>Organisational change: more efficient processes essential, elimination of unnecessary activities, lean organisation, development of technology to reduce time wastage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In essence, whether it is a short week, smart working or other forms of hourly flexibility contract, one cannot disregard the\u00a0<strong>human resource<\/strong>\u00a0and their family, social and personal commitments, at the centre of complex organisational systems.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The four-day working week is not (at least not any more) something purely idealistic: cases in Italy and around the world show that it is possible, especially if well thought-out models are adopted, if there is a willingness to innovate and attention to the balance between productivity and well-being!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Article by Sonia Palmeri<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Negli ultimi anni, l\u2019idea di ridurre la settimana lavorativa da cinque a quattro giorni ha guadagnato sempre pi\u00f9 spazio nel dibattito pubblico. Abbraccia il pi\u00f9 ampio concetto di\u00a0wellbeing,\u00a0ossia il benessere fisico, mentale ed emotivo dei dipendenti all\u2019interno di un\u2019azienda, ed \u00e8 una proposta che interseca salute mentale, produttivit\u00e0, sostenibilit\u00e0 e innovazione organizzativa. In Italia colossi [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1],"tags":[83,118,116,117],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-picks","category-news","tag-lavoro","tag-servizi-hr","tag-settimana-lavorativa","tag-wellbeing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montecarlostyle.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"WordPress","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}