I prefer to stroll round previous cemeteries and browse the headstones. Right here in Iceland, it has been customary to engrave individuals’s job titles under their names and as I age I discover myself questioning if mine will say “Trainer”. Though I really like my work, I type of hope it won’t.
By way of the centuries, girls’s headstones have hardly ever had titles aside from “Housewife” or maybe “Spouse of [insert husband’s job title]”. Though right this moment girls in Iceland have all types of jobs, we’ve got but to succeed in full equality. However an necessary step on that journey has been the shortening of the 40-hour working week to 36 hours.
This transformation began in 2019 in response to campaigning by a few of our greatest unions and following the success of trials that concerned greater than 1% of Iceland’s working inhabitants. Consequently, shut on 90% of the nation’s working inhabitants now work shorter hours or have the fitting to shorten their working week.
Different nations are contemplating following Iceland’s lead. Germany, Portugal, Spain and the UK have run, or are working, pilot initiatives. And a 12 months in the past, Belgium turned the first EU nation to legislate a four-day week for anybody who desires it. Nevertheless, not like our Icelandic mannequin, anybody signing as much as work 4 days in Belgium has to condense the identical variety of working hours into fewer days. Possibly that’s why fewer than 1% of individuals have accomplished so.
So how has it labored right here? It had beforehand been extra widespread for ladies in Iceland to work part-time in order to have the ability to juggle household and work commitments. Since 2019, this has meant a step in the direction of larger equality as a result of our shorter working week has additionally made it attainable for individuals (largely girls) who labored 36 hours as a part-time job to have a full-time job working the identical hours. And full-time jobs include higher pay and phrases and situations for working the identical hours as earlier than.
The change has additionally given many males who have been at all times caught at work the pliability to be extra concerned with their youngsters’s every day lives.
Tumi, my husband, works in a authorities workplace. At first, he selected to work till midday each Friday however quickly determined as an alternative to have two full Fridays off every month. On his free days, he likes to sleep in, then to make lengthy cellphone calls to his fellow pigeon fanciers whereas cleansing the kitchen, earlier than going to the retailers looking for fascinating books. Furthermore, he’s house in time to select up our son from college at 13.40. Since I acquire our son the opposite days, this provides me the liberty each different Friday afternoon to fulfill pals for a chat, volunteer, or just to go to the swimming pool alone, which is an absolute gamechanger for a drained trainer who desires to flee burnout.
Most of us know that demob completely happy feeling the day earlier than we take time without work to go on vacation. There’s a lightness and a way of freedom. My husband enjoys that feeling twice a month now and I don’t have to recollect which week it’s, as a result of on Thursday afternoons I can see it on his face.
Being a secondary college trainer, this transformation doesn’t technically apply to me since my job remains to be deemed to be 40 hours every week. Nevertheless, solely 26 hours every week are spent really educating in a classroom. The remainder of the time is taken up with conferences, marking and getting ready classes. We have now the liberty to organise these non-teaching hours ourselves, in order that signifies that by working a bit longer some days, I’m able to take off the Friday afternoons my husband is off too.
Directors, caretakers, cleaners and kitchen employees at my college belong to different unions and now work a shorter week, and we’ve got modified our schedule in order that there are fewer afternoon courses on Friday. The employees are completely happy and the scholars haven’t complained.
Totally different firms and establishments have totally different wants and clearly not everybody can shut the store at midday as soon as every week. Some employees have lower their espresso breaks and lunches, and other people have needed to rethink how work is deliberate, which conferences could possibly be shorter, which may be on-line or which selections may be taken by e-mail as an alternative.
In fact, there are at all times individuals who need to return to the best way issues have been earlier than and we’ve got but to repair all the issues, such because the stress some individuals expertise in the event that they go away the workplace early however their work retains piling up.
It has undoubtedly not been easy, and it doesn’t apply to all jobs, however all qualitative and quantitative information signifies that most individuals who’ve diminished their hours adore it – job satisfaction has elevated, stress is diminished and workers really feel happier at work.
after publication promotion
And opposite to fears that productiveness and the supply of companies would undergo, nothing could possibly be farther from the reality. Intensive analysis has proven that they’ve remained the identical and even improved, generally simply by eradicating longer espresso breaks or prioritising work higher.
My good friend Bára works in an enormous automotive dealership. She defined to me how employees acquired collectively to determine the best way to implement a shorter work week with out affecting their clients. Workplace employees can now select to complete earlier each day, have a half-day off every week, or an entire time without work each two weeks, whereas the mechanics modified their shift patterns however repair simply as many vehicles on time. Bára tells me that the employees are pleased with the adjustments and none of them, bosses included, would ever return to the best way it was earlier than.
And we aren’t spending our additional free hours going to the physician or attending conferences at our kids’s faculties. In Iceland, we’ve got at all times had the fitting to do these items with out having our pay docked. None of that has modified.
As a substitute, we’re utilizing these valuable hours for train, haircuts, purchasing and assembly pals with out the sensation that we’re lacking out on high quality household time.
An added bonus for these of us dwelling in Reykjavík is the discount within the traditional Friday rush-hour visitors, which makes getting across the metropolis a lot simpler and extra nice.
Modifications reminiscent of this to the best way we work might sound unattainable however they are often made if individuals come collectively and rethink the best way work is completed. I’m a full-time trainer however but I’m additionally a mom, spouse, daughter, sister and good friend, and having a couple of additional hours each different week when my husband is freed as much as do the childcare permits me to higher fulfil all these roles. I’m additionally simply this lady who likes to stroll round in cemeteries and ponder on the which means of life. And I can do extra of that, too.
Supply hyperlink
