3 day weekend – Fact or Fiction? | 4BC, ABC radio Alice Springs and Nth West South Australia
There’s a proposal flying around that taking a 3 day weekend will enhance our health, well-being, family, society and economy.
It is based on having more time to relax and unwind, its speaks to the ability to be more efficient and focused on your 4 days of work and the possibility of hiring others to work on the other days.
Tim Brunero of ABC Local radio Alice Springs wanted to explore this notion and as we chatted I laid on him my belief that in the next few years the notion of a weekend, a standard 5 day week and 9-5 jobs would all become obsolete as we moved into a world that worked to project and task – getting things done as, where and when they need to be done, rather than trying to shoehorn it into an industrial revolution constructed work week, that required many people to come together at a set time and place to get stuff done, even if there wasn’t stuff to be done or it might have been better done elsewhere, or at an alternate time.
This issue of family life, weekends and holidays came up as possible issues and as I see it the ability to work where and when you want, with the proviso of course that work gets completed to specification and on time, allows families to choose together time that suit them all, to be able to come together for important events and school activities and to re-frame family back into the centre of activity,rather than something else that has to be juggled in a busy week.
“One size does not fit all” and this new work construct will not suit all industries, work-spaces or people, but this approach to work will be one of the many possible work permutations that we will be able to choose from in the very near future.
Have a listen to the segment now and then share your thoughts on tomorrow’s workplace.
Andy Gall @ ABC North West South Australia also phoned in for a chat on the topic:
and then Chris Adams of Brisbane’s 4BC gave me a call and he had a completely different set of questions and views on the 3 day weekend, have a listen to our chat:
There’s a proposal flying around that taking a 3 day weekend will enhance our health, well-being, family, society and economy. It is based on having more time to relax and unwind, its speaks to the ability to be more efficient and focused on your 4 days of work and the possibilit.
When signals like 3 day weekend Fact or Fiction emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether 3 day weekend Fact or Fiction will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
