 I am thrilled to welcome you all to the four-day week discussion which I'm very glad we're having on a Wednesday instead of a Friday because then maybe no one would have shown up. I'm Adam Grant. I'm an organizational psychologist and author and I've been fascinated by this question of why do we work the amount that we do for a long time. I study work for a living but I don't think it should necessarily define us and it was about a century ago that Henry Ford, not exactly known for his enlightened views on management and taking care of humans, reduced the work week from six days to five because he found that people were more productive, morale went up, there was more loyalty, there was lower turnover and he said it was good for business and then we could start to wonder well why are we now stuck on five days? Was that ordained from on high or is this in fact a human invention that deserves to be rethought? A lot of organizations around the world are rethinking the work week right now. You've seen the trials by the Icelandic government, by Microsoft Japan, there's a New Zealand insurance company that's been doing it for years and the data are really encouraging so far. It's still early but for the most part performance has either gone up or stayed the same and people end up having more time to live their lives and if there is a silver lining of COVID it has to be that we rethink our priorities right that we may decide we don't want our jobs to be the center of our lives and we want to plan work around life as opposed to vice versa which too many of us particularly in the West have done for too long. So the purpose of the panel today is to talk about is the four-day week actually viable? If so what should it look like and how do we make it happen because I have met some people in Davos who do not think we should even work as few as six days so I think we have some minds to change. Let me start with social entrepreneur Hilary Cottum. Hilary can you give us some history and walk us through how did we get to five days a week and where should we be going? Okay so let me say to start off that the question was necessity or luxury and I think that this is a complete necessity for environmental reasons, for human well-being flourishing reasons and also for economic reasons and I think what's really interesting is that you know when you ask me about history is that we think time is immutable but if we look at the history of work it changes so we used to live by prayer time some societies still do then we move to agrarian time a lot of us in the West still have school timetables that are stuck on that old-fashioned agrarian time which is really problematic then we move to industrial time which you've referenced which was really complicated I mean the reason that we have you know in Western Europe and maybe in the US kind of big clocks in our town squares is because the biggest problem industrial leaders had was getting people to work on time because working to a clock was such a kind of alien idea and now of course we've internalized the clock but in you know when industrial time started people thought that there would be radical experiments and one of the most interesting is Kellogg's in the 1930s and what happened in the 1930s in Kellogg's is that Kellogg's it was one of the biggest factories the breakfast cereal he offered his workers six hour shifts from eight hours for exactly the same pay and what happened was that people flock to Kellogg's journalists the administrators of the Hoover you know the Hoover administrators social scientists there are amazing household studies of what happened because everybody thought industrialization would lead to less work of course you know Keynes was writing about how his grandchildren would have 15 hour days and so what's really interesting is that at Kellogg's productivity went up dramatically accidents went down you know the economics of the of the company really changed and people's lives improved and when the when the kind of household studies people went people said that they had quote more life that what was amazing was that they could fit in taking care of people they had time to make things they made their own culture they ran their own sports teams you know things fitted into their lives and you know what what we know now is that in fact that wasn't the kind of experiment that stuck we probably don't have it's very interesting why not which we probably don't have time for but you know even before the pandemic the ILO and WHO said that work was killing us and for the last two years I've been running workshops with workers in kind of post industrial places and what they ask for is not a four-day week what they ask for is a rethinking of the linear life with less work so I think it's a necessity but it doesn't go far enough because four days is a kind of may I say a male solution to this problem because basically it doesn't think about care because as we all know care of our children or our parents or just being with friends doesn't happen in four days it happens around the day so what we actually need to do is rethink the boundaries of time between work and care between learning rethinking the linear life of course doesn't mean just the work study kind of in blocks and maybe we need some new boundaries so that we do have time to play and to be and and so on so a four-day working week a necessity a start but I think not the picture I think I think we could get on board with that I do want to just be to be really clear now how many days you think we should be working total though are you advocating for a two-day week a one-day week how much work do you think is ideal well that's a really difficult question but I think a starting point would be that we work the equivalent of four days over seven so we're not talking about adding more hours we're talking about having more time to be and I mean one of the things that we should talk about is the climate agenda because there is very good research that shows that if we work less we don't travel so much and we we make less intensive consumer choices you know because we're not time poor and we all know that wealthy people are those who are using you know more carbon and so then we're not using so much more carbon but I don't know maybe I mean people want to work at different amounts it doesn't need to what we need to is regulate a floor and then people some people love their work and they might want to do more but for most people in the world work is pretty back breaking and so we need to think about that starting point excellent so I'm going to go down the line for the first round of questions and then we'll mix it up you're in this precinct you run manpower group you've been piloting a lot of different ways to if not shorten the work we can at least give people a little more flexible the other opportunities tell us about that yes no you're right grab and Adam and and you know what's really nice about a session like this is I get to be playing the role of an enlightened forward-looking leader now since we're in a closed session like this we can all be clear that you have been carried into this kicking and streaming by all my colleagues you know led by Michelle or head of people and culture who's been talking about implementing a work my way strategy which is really responding to the desires of workers and our employees which is to have more time for their life and you know I think that's been a really good evolution I would say unusual at first but I think we can see that this is what our employees are looking for more control more choice I'd have to say though that the four-day work week discussion you know I am I see it as part of the desire so clearly expressed during the pandemic and will be expressed will be one of the lasting legacies of the pandemic that workers in general desire more flexibility so they have more choice we think this is one of the lasting legacies of the pandemic I would say though that as soon as knowledge workers are involved we talk about these revolutions in the workplace four-day work week or you know flexibility there are many professions nurses airline crews doctors truck drivers that are already working in compressed work schedules producing the output that is requested but in different regimented schedules that are not traditional five-day 40-hour work weeks and I should add working from home where you can now have this notion of remote working and flexibility 60% of the workforce in most developed countries don't have the luxury of that experience and actually they've been working way more during the pandemic because we needed them as essential workers to keep the economy going so on the one hand I'm delighted with the discussion I'm absolutely in favor we have a great scheme at manpower group that we're now working towards and I think that's the way we're going to be doing business going forward giving people different choices trusting their judgment it's not necessarily an individual choice though because being in a company is a team sport so teams will have to decide how best to engage and when to be together when not for what purpose no point in coming in the office to have a zoom call but you want to have time to collaborate but at the same time I would argue you know this needs to be equitably distributed across many categories of workers not only knowledge workers not only those that can work from home but people who are in production lines who are driving trucks who are in warehouses who are manufacturing otherwise we'll have a bifurcation of the workforce and an unequitable distribution of this this very valuable benefit and that is truly something that all workers are looking for I want to reinforce something that you just said which is we've had a lot of debates about remote and hybrid work over the last couple of years but if you look at the data there was a Wall Street Journal survey earlier this year showing that the flexibility people want most at work is not choices about where they work it's choices about when and how much they work yeah right more than a chance to work from home or anywhere people want flexible hours which I think is what we're here to discuss right so Anne Marie Slaughter you have been at New America at Princeton at the State Department in the U.S. you've had a lot of policy roles can you help us look at this from a macro perspective because it's easy for me as a psychologist to say yes from a micro standpoint I will get better work out of people in six focused hours than eight unfocused hours but how would this change society how does the world look different if we go with four days a week so let me start my saying I think of it as 32 hours distributed as necessary and I actually think there's lots of experimentation I know there are places that do two eight-hour days and then some four-hour days that obviously you can do five six-hour days or one day off so just putting that out there and then to the the larger question and it builds on Jurgen's point that Jonas is sorry Jonas's point that different categories of workers have very different needs so when I first started writing about flexible work what I heard from were lots of people who were working minimum wage and and didn't have defined hours they were working on just in time scheduling web with time software that meant they often didn't have enough work so the first thing I want to say from a societal point of view is this yes for knowledge workers fine for many other workers this is a nightmare that what they want is predictability they need to know when they're going to have childcare they need to know they're going to have enough hours to actually make it and unless we address that this simply increases the inequity that we already see so dramatically much much much further so start with that whatever we do we have to also recognize that we've got to make sure that everyone is able to work enough hours to have a living wage beyond that though I do I think I think there's a revolution here in agency and that is good for society and I'll use the example of an academic as a professor at Princeton I had to be in the classroom you will notice maximum five hours a week now for each of those hours I had a lot of preparation but that was on my own time I also had to show up of faculty meeting and I had office hours the total not more than eight hours it was up to me how I work to get that done I also had to produce research it was up to me most academics work really hard but we work on our own time all right if we need but certainly if you need to be somewhere for your children or if you simply want to work out every morning whatever it might be the focus there is much more on task than on time and that to me is the larger social revolution and it's the management revolution it is so much easier to manage according to presence rather than performance you were there 12 hours you were there 14 hours you were you know you had your jacket hanging over your chair and I saw your light burning you have no idea if you actually got your work done so but thinking about tasks means we really have to prioritize what needs to get done and what like half of my inbox maybe two-thirds of my inbox should actually be burned right it is not productive work it gives the illusion of productivity but it's not I'm productivity is me sending things out where I've decided this is really important work or doing the work that takes more time so I do think it would be far better for society again thinking about all of society I think it would give us time to be whole human beings Hillary and I've written a lot about what we call sapiens integrus so there's homo economicus this mythical you know human being that is rational all the time and driven by a set of utilities and then there's whole human beings who also have care and connection and other good things I think it would be good for all of society but I also think this increase in agency of here's what we need done now you figure out how best to do it this reminds me of one of our deans who complained that I didn't go to enough faculty meetings and I needed to put in more FaceTime and so I FaceTimed him I also would really like to know the physics of how to burn email but that is for another day I know I was sort of having this nice image of it just like self-destructing yeah like it's mission impossible which really captures the rage that you feel about all these intrusions into your life Ahudal Rumi as a minister you have embarked on one of the bolder tests of a shorter work week can you tell us about I think it's four and a half days some opted for four and half some opted for four but before I start Adam if you allow me this concept of the shorter work week I kept my eye on it for many years giving my previous role as minister of well-being in in my government and I saw there were many trials around the world since 2008 but something shifted in the past two years I think as Yonah said this may be part of the impact of COVID and the pandemic where people had went through a roller coaster of change they worked from home the line between the personal and professional life blurred and then when they started going back to the organizations or reboarding in the organization there was a tension there was more demand for flexibility well-being discussion about mental health and also more demand or with the tension between the remote and the physical work I see more of the implementation around the world in the private sector rather than the governments and I can understand that because governments usually are slow they have rigid systems in the UAE I think we are creating the the government of the future we always push boundaries and we're not afraid of experimenting with with new things and maybe we are the first country in the world to institute the shorter work week government-wide and employees are given the flexibility to work remotely or manage their working hours on flexi times this decision was triggered by four reasons first enhancing the well-being second strengthening the family bonds and the community relations because people will have more time to take care of their families whether men or women and they will have more time for recreational activities the third one is economic because when people have a longer weekend they can spend more and this will benefit the local domestic sectors and also to better align with the global markets but also we were supported to move ahead and I can mention some of the factors that really supported us in this implementation first discussion on well-being is advanced in the UAE we started in 2016 developing a national well-being strategy that was even before the pandemic and had the honor to work on that agenda main pillar of that agenda was well-being at workplace we had we developed the tools and the guides for that the second as Anne-Marie mentioned we focus on results not clock and clock out productivity at the heart of what we do we have systems to measure the performance of entities and individuals third we had the right digital infrastructure which allowed us to provide services 24-7 regardless of the hours or the working days which is really essential for governments because some of the early trials around the world failed because of the complaints from the citizens because of the disruption in the service delivery and the fourth thing is that we had agility in our HR system we were able to move fast and we were supported by the leadership and maybe I can share later with you some of the early data that we gathered from this implementation and what we learned from this experience we would love to hear about those data now especially because there's some other governments here in Davos that could benefit from your expertise thank you Adam we started the implementation in January 2022 we planned it very well because you know government entities are sensitive to change so we have to do a lot of coordination to make sure schools hospitals government entities they are on on board so some of the early data that we gathered are really promising 70 percent of employees reported that working they are working more efficiently prioritizing and managing better their time during the week reduction 55 percent reduction in absentees which is wonderful and 71 percent of employees reported that they're spending more time with their families and let me share a funny story with you about this and how people adapt to change because this might benefit also some of the organizations that thinking of implementation when I went to office on Monday morning after the first long weekend I was so excited and happy to ask my colleagues how was their weekend and I was shocked some of them were lost some of them were angry say uh uh we don't know what do you mean you don't know we don't know what to do with the extra time that we have a time so they needed some time to adjust to the extra time that they had and now they're spending more time with their families and also 95 percent of students reported that they enrolled in more extracurricular activities during the longer weekend to support their talent or hobbies so the results are promising but we are still monitoring the implementation to make sure that objectives are met and that we can adjust the policy as we go forward it reminds me a little bit of something that happened in brazil not long ago at semco where um there was an observation that people by the time they get to retirement age are often not mentally or physically able to take full advantage of it and so they started to retire a little program where you could buy back a day of your week and they expected that it was going to be people in their 50s doing it most popular among people in their 20s and 30s so I think there's um there's something here so we have heard I think a very strong case for the well-being uh family climate economic benefits of shortening the work week I just love to get a sense of the room and the panel so let's uh let's start with one question which is can you just hold up the number of days per week that you currently work let's ask the panel to do that and also those of you who are physically in the room with us hold up however many days you work currently I'm a hypocrite but okay okay I'm seeing a lot of six and sevens out there um two hands would be the clue and then how many days ideally would you be working moving forward what you want yeah what I want I mean I could work four to five yeah of course it can be flexible you can go like this if that helps you all right so I think the majority both of the panel and of the room is working a lot and wants to be working less even if they love their work yeah so what are the obstacles to moving toward that world and how do we overcome the resistance I'm going to open this up whoever has thoughts where where do we go next and I will cold call if I have to but I know you all have thoughts no no go ahead no you go well I was just going to say that I think that what Gould said is really interesting that we do have to kind of relearn how to use disposable time and we did see this in the pandemic we saw people you know beginning to take up knitting or baking and we began to kind of use our leisure time in different ways but I also wanted to come back to a point that both of you made which is that I read this analysis recently that actually Keynes was right that over our lifetime we do work 15 hour weeks it's just that as you said we have it all at the end of our lives and one of the most interesting experiments that I've seen is in Scotland where in the state is and it's interesting that the state can be a mover of these examples is asking people with very difficult work like you're a grave digger or a rubbish collector so in the state you can only apply for those jobs when you're young and then when you're a bit older you do sort of kind of slightly easier work and then at the end you become kind of a community worker janitor that's kind of so so you can also sort of spread the load in that way which I think is really really interesting it'd be amazing if work and family didn't peek at the same time in our lives well exactly but but we are our own worst enemies aren't we I mean I think that's the or at least here in Davosville like not necessarily everybody lets me but isn't the the the source of the happiness and the delight with the ability to work in new and different ways um the ability to choose how you want to work that works with your life and different people have different circumstances so for some people getting the extra day the formal extra day you only work four days as opposed to five you know may give them a lot of disposable time that they can do other stuff in and they'll be delighted with that whereas other people may say you know what dropping off kids at bus and picking up kids at bus priority number one if I can work my way around that and I fix that I'm delighted and I'll be happy to work you know on a on a Saturday to catch up on stuff I didn't have time to do before because you know I I saw some interesting research recently in in the US as you know we you know we we don't have a lot of vacation but there are some companies as part of as part of their new employee offering say unlimited vacation is the benefit expecting people to be delighted and you know what the outcome is when you give unlimited vacation in organizations that treasure a lot of work people take less vacation because the cultural environment is you know it's not not seen as rewarding and or being rewarded so so I think it's the notion of choice that gives the benefit and and the delight at least when I think about this from my perspective you know that I enjoy working you know when I can and when I'm interested in different topics but it can happen you know all the time at different times and I have time to do other things as well I feel the same way and I feel like I should disclose I work part of a sixth day because nobody else is working then and I want everyone else to go to four so that the fifth day will be like that so I will say at New America we you get six weeks paid time off so that includes everything and you can only roll over two of those weeks so if you don't take four weeks you're just leaving money on the table you will not cash it out when you leave but that's how strongly I believe that fundamentally I put this on my out of office in August that I can do 12 months of work in 11 months but not in 12 months you give me that one month off and really off I mean yes I read I do I do the kind of thing that I never have time to do but I don't do email I don't do your sort of standard stuff and that recharges you I mean again you you need that for for your productivity your creativity all of all of that so I actually think even in the United States we desperately need to change change that but this question about it does come down also to what we value in in how people spend their time so in the Atlantic article I wrote a decade ago I pointed out that if you had a man in your office who got up at four to train for a marathon and then came into the office and worked a regular day he would just be wow you know look at that discipline that's really something very much impressed the woman who does that and I know many who gets up at four to make sure the lunches are packed all the stuff is organized getting her kids ready and then comes in is actually regarded as less than if she's spending time on care so the question is and and you could you could think of lots of other hobbies in the same way what do we value the United States really thinks that how hard you work is the measure of your moral worth and in fact I would argue that caring for your family is and of course work supports a family we're all we're all aware of that but that the time you spend on emotional caregiving is just as really if anything it's more a measure of moral worth but at the very least it's equal so we all if we're going to think about time off we have to not undercut it by thinking only some things or sneaking that work on the weekend is what really defines about you know a human being we admire as opposed to a really well-rounded human being a human being who has many hobbies or really spends that time on community or family care wow being a hard worker does not make you a good person you heard it in Davos I work hard and I expect people to work hard but that doesn't mean working all the time far from it all right I'm looking at time I want to make sure we have time for lots of audience questions so let's begin we have a hand I just want to remind everyone that questions do end with a question mark thanks everyone hi I run a news organization that reports about conflicts and disasters around the world so we're very busy so I work a lot and appreciate all this thinking but I suppose you can switch down to four hours or four days a week but if if everything around you is still moving at the same pace it's impossible you're you can't so you know you need the whole society to slow down and that's a much bigger challenge than telling your employees you can work four days a week so how do you tackle that piece of it can I just try um so in the UAE the shorter work week was implemented for government we did not implement impose it on private sector what happened interestingly interestingly that 50% of the private companies followed the decision and even some of the global companies who have offices in the UAE took that practice and applied it in their offices across the world so I agree with you those there should be a coordinated effort from the private sector public sector to make it easy and for people to adapt for whether they have children in school or they're working in the private sector or the public sector so this is also a lesson learned from the UAE I wonder if that would work in reverse if a bunch of private companies started will governments follow I think we have we have a bunch of hands right over there please thanks very much I'm John Neil I'm chairman of Unipart group you know I think we've all learned the benefits of flexible working and we've all enjoyed it and there's a lot to learn from it and if you ask people would you like to work less hours it's pretty easy to say yes but maybe have to ask them another question which is you work in a western economy which is in deep debt so and most most western economies are certainly the UK is the US is if you ask another question which said well you can work four hours a week less but not so much money for education not so much money for healthcare sorry we can't spend any money on climate change or you could work four hours more and maybe we have a chance of fixing climate change and all the other things maybe you'd get a different answer and I just wonder what the thoughts of the panel are on that question so can I just ask a clarifying question you're assuming you'd get paid less no no no no you'd get paid but you'd be the same amount as now you exactly so the taxes tax revenues would be the same no the tax would be up because you mean but by and large the GDP is a function of how many hours we all work over simplification so if people are working more hours there's a greater GDP a greater tax take and therefore more money that can be spent by the state on providing benefits for people so you know the reason it's a controversial point is because we all kind of like the idea of working less hours and being more flexible but there's an economic cost to it so if you just ask people would you like to work less yeah sure I would but would you like to pay the consequence of that and then a more controversial question is if we asked you to work more hours but you'd get these benefits what would be the answer and that's the question I'm really asking for the views of the panel and I realize it's a little counterintuitive in an environment where we all like the idea of working less and working more flexibly I think our panel is rejecting the premise of the question well I think what you're getting at is you know the drive for productivity and I think assumed in all of this is what Anne-Marie said is 12 months of work done in 11 or 10 or whatever whatever it is because by the same token if you think back 100 years we were working 70 to 80 hours a week and productivity then took off because we're applying new technologies and our output increased so we created prosperity through growth but not by working more hours we actually reduced the hours almost by half if you think about this from an agrarian move and you Hilary you talked about the agrarian move and then into the industrial era and our capacity to produce wealth you know doubled or more than doubled many many times many many times over and I think the premise of this discussion is you know with the help of technology in different ways of working we are going to be able to create prosperity but not by working more hours but by increasing productivity in the way that we interact with innovation and technology so I think that's sort of the starting promise because I think everyone agrees it you know you can't lower productivity productivity needs to continue to grow but I think the great example of how quickly you can switch on stuff that we never thought we could you know remote working and technologies it's not as if all the companies suddenly bought zoom in one week you know we all had the technologies but we used them you know infrequently and poorly you know working our normal lives and then suddenly one day we couldn't go to the office and the very same technology suddenly was the lifeline that saved all of our businesses and we could continue operating in in new ways so the shift when forced can actually be dramatic and can be very very quick as well can I add to this I mean I think you know it is true that all the experiments show you know within reason that if you work less you are more productive so we do reject the premise I think of your question but the other thing is I think what's really important is how expensive this overwork is so this is why the ILO and WHO their data shows that work is killing us because if you work too much you have you know societies are dealing with a massive mental health crisis they're dealing with all kinds of chronic disease crises because we're not kind of you know out and about and walking so we're kind of suffering from different chronic conditions so there's there's a huge amount of particularly state expenditure that is dealt that is actually addressing too much work because you know I mean unfortunately the kind of work that is too much is not represented in this room because we are all kind of knowledge workers and leaders and so on but but for most people this is a kind of huge issue and then the other thing just to go because Anne Marie raised the really important point of equality but you know one of the biggest differentiators in what happens to our children is does anybody have time to help them with their homework yeah so if you have two parents working you know as all the families that I work in in the kind of work I do really really long hours they don't have time for that it's a massive marker of inequality that is then marking the next generation and we have to think about this is sustainable over generations we have a question in the front and while the microphone is on its way this is a good time to say that WEF actually has a framework on what good work looks like and if you take a look here I would just highlight a couple of things on here obviously inclusions there flexibility is huge but we're also talking about health and well-being being part of the responsibility of an employer and I think that that has come on the radar in a big way in the last few years and the cost of burnout for cardiovascular disease for depression and anxiety and a whole host of other psychological and physical conditions I would estimate four outweighs the benefit of whatever extra hours we are putting in thank you me now the rabie I'm the editor-in-chief of newspaper called the national it's a 24-hour media outlet so like heba I think about this is wonderful but we have to cover the shifts so one of the two problem question one is that we could give people four day weeks and reduce the hours they're working but we have to find people who are equally skilled because it would have to be shift system and the time when we're looking at a real search for talent but also the fact that there's 100% employment rates in a number of countries how are we going to find that given the crunch that we're in and the expectations post COVID and in addition to that not working would include not reading email is that possible for the majority of people who are not leaders who can actually delegate down can you switch off and is reading your email and keeping your eye on work and what's happening still considered work because I think even understanding what work means changes from person to person but I'd really focus on the on the having the talent because you think again about doctors we don't have enough doctors to do really drastic surgeries if they start taking more time off that has a real impact who wants it I mean I have a lot to say but I feel that I've said a lot about this but I mean I think one I think I mean obviously when you look at different professions I mean I challenge your doctor point I mean in the in the British health service we don't have enough professionals because it's like pouring water into a leaky bucket because the working conditions are so stressful and so long that everybody is leaving so we just can't train or steal enough people from other countries to keep our health systems going but I think what's really interesting is that you see big worker gains in technology revolutions but they have to fit with the technology so one one big gain in the last one was the weekend if you told people they were going to have a paid weekend people would have also said but hang on a minute like the production lines need to run seven days how is it possible to pay people for two days off this is never going to happen and yet it has happened and it's been rolled back and what's interesting about digital technologies is asynchronous so we should be able to think about how we kind of dovetail in new ways and we just haven't kind of I don't think we've imagined it enough now I you know when I run my workshops people they they reach for this and then if they're kind of lawyers or their design clients or their journalists they say but hang on a minute you know this person expects always to see the same person or so part of it is normative there may be some professions which is why I think we need to think about the non-linear life like you may do your job meaner for like 10 years and then you may need to kind of think about doing something else because it's simply unsustainable to kind of you know be brilliant in this way for that long so I think that that's because just I want to say one other thing is I think that this is not an individual thing this is a social thing like we need societies that give people time to rest to retrain so it's not about you know rewarding the individual we have to think about how we change the norms which is why I think your work is so interesting because you know you've been doing it at the state level to kind of say you don't have to do this but this is the new norm and I think that's very interesting I'll just add one quick point to this which is I also wonder if we need new models for shift work since a lot of people in this room are thinking about that I invested in a startup recently called a team that's trying to reimagine how we organize our work lives and they've taken the builder economy and said look if you're a software engineer or a designer you can team up with the people that you most want to work with and then you can work on projects together and these projects come out and you can rent your skills out to the highest bidder or the most noble purpose as opposed to working for one company I wonder why we aren't doing that in more kinds of work right this is what what uber drivers do you don't have assigned shifts you have tasks that need to be done and then there's a pool of people who are available to take those what if all of our jobs were organized like that we wouldn't have jobs I guess but we would have projects and we would have a lot of flexibility around it and I would no please no no I mean I would I would push all even further job shares yeah I remember at the national security council one point two young mothers both with you know relatively very young children they would have been very happy to share the job so that somebody was on because yes it's the national security council no no no we can't do that they would take half money they didn't need they had you know leave of various kinds there are all sorts of ways you can think creatively about how to cover what needs to be covered and on email I was looking I was looking for my phone to see if I have it on my Kindle but I just bought a book on the world without email email is killing us right I mean there's just no way we need to know what is happening all the time and respond all the time so I actually think that's a separate conversation and a separate reform that we won't be going through I'm going to email you about it later other questions from the room right up here please thank you Stephika thank you hi uh Henry Beza Manila I run an educational company there but I'm also half French and we we did implement a 35 hour working week um and I was just curious what your thoughts were a on that experiment and b on the role of government legislation uh because the theory in the time in France was if you wait for people to come up with it if you wait for companies to legislate it's going to take too long we're just going to impose it on everyone else and obviously lots of backlash but it pushed through so I'm very curious what your thoughts are on legislation in general and in the French example if you have any thoughts thank you you know I think that that's a great example of you know the the gentleman had asked a question about a change that wasn't driven by productivity improvements but a societal desire to work less with the theory that if you take 40 weeks to 35 lots more jobs will be created on the 8% unemployment rate at the time in France is going to come down because more jobs were going to be created none of that happened what happened was that everybody continued to work exactly the same amount of hours because you're in France though we're all tracking this which means all Frenchmen have eight weeks of vacation so you extended you know not more people got into the workforce no more jobs were created but people have difficulties frankly in France to manage schedules that are overlapping we have a lot of frontline people that are three or four people in the office you know there's a lot of coordination between who's on vacation and who is not so as not to break the 35 hour work rule and getting everybody that legislated time off so as far as the intention was concerned it is considered to be an abject failure actually wow so Ohud tell us how we can make this a success can you fix France for us I'll talk about the way so you know Adam I see the four-day work week as part of a bigger fundamental changes that we are witnessing in workplace yeah and this change is unavoidable fast-paced and continuous and I think the governments can play a role in being the role model and champion the changes in workplace because I think the pandemic and the disruption caused by the pandemic is giving us golden opportunity to reimagine the legislations the redesign the work that was invented 100 days 100 days 100 years ago and have more agile and flexible systems in the UAE we mandated on the government we did not mandate it on the private sector but then the private sector when they saw the government leading they opted to implement it in the private sector and not just in the UAE but in the world so I think the government can play a role in showing I think entities they need data they need numbers so we need to do a lot of assessment and publish numbers to convince also leaders whether in the public sector or private sector to adopt the the new norm I think there's no u-turn it's just going forward and many of entities will adopt the shorter work week perfect segue to my closing question in the minute we have left we didn't really answer the question of how are we going to get more people on board with a shorter work week can I ask you each to give us a sentence if you have one piece of advice for the room on how we can make work a slightly smaller part of our lives what would you suggest and I'll just start by saying don't count it out until you run the experiment pilot it let's actually see what happens you know in in in labor markets that are constrained in terms of workers workers are making the choice for us they're joining organizations that will provide flexibility and choice and working their way or working my way is really the way to attract and retain talent so I think it's a little bit of an academic question because I think it's going to be reality this is how the world is going because workers want this to happen we've proven that it can be done and it's moving in that direction and I would say for the managers who are worried about it because I find it's much more the managers than the workers manage to task identify this is what I need done this is when I need it done by this is the quality I need and then just see I'm a social entrepreneur and I find that the pushback often comes from small businesses is often an idea that big business can do this but small business can't and what I've done is I've used an organization called Timewise UK for my hiring Timewise has women who basically want to work predictable flexibility I hire from them immediately I have a fantastic workforce that share that norm so there's not like one person kind of dropping off their kids and then everybody else begins to adjust so other younger workers might not have children but they certainly want to see their friends this can't just be about whether you have children or not and so this this immediately begins to kind of shift the norm so you know make it a make it don't do it a one person thing hiring that way for a cultural and it can happen everywhere let's focus on the purpose what are we trying to achieve here I think it's the well-being and flexibility so this can be achieved by a shorter work week or by other tools that can be the answer for the the purpose and for governments I think the non-negotiable is service delivery to public we we cannot we cannot jeopardize the service delivery so as long as we providing the services the right service to our people then we can adopt any solution well we have a range of views on the ideal amount of work but I think we're all aligned on the idea that we want to make choices about how much we work and that ultimately people should be evaluated not on the time they put in but on the contributions they make thank you all