Wall St.Journal Weekend 29Feb2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 |C3

dred companies in different coun-

tries and sectors that have short-

ened their days or weeks without

sacrificing productivity or profit-

ability—and often improving both.

If done right, shorter hours can help

companies flourish.

What sets these firms on a differ-

ent path? Company founders, hav-

ing done their share of weekends

and all-nighters, often encounter a

crisis that spurs a change. For ex-

ample, chef Stuart Ralston worked

for Gordon Ramsay and then opened

his own restaurant in Edinburgh,

but after three years of long hours

trying to make it a success, he

shifted himself and his employees to

four-day weeks in 2018. “I was los-

ing too much of myself and my fam-

ily time,” he said.

To get started, companies look at

their weekly revenues to decide

whether to close during their slow-

est day or reduce their opening

hours. (Many find they do compara-

tively little client business or ship-

ping on Fridays.)

Businesses can then turn to in-

ternal changes to become more ef-

ficient—for instance, by making

meetings shorter and confining

them to specific periods of the day.

They set new rules to reduce dis-

tractions. At the Copenhagen-based

consultancy IIH Nordic, workers

are given noise-cancelling head-

phones and special music to help

them concentrate; red lights and

timers on desks signal when an em-

ployee is heads-down and shouldn’t

be disturbed.

Companies develop new cultural

norms around time. Garages and

nursing homes shorten shifts but

enforce on-time arrival and reduce

breaks.

When he implemented a five-

hour day at Blue Street Capital in

Huntington Beach, Calif., CEO David

Rhoades banned impromptu “Got a

minute?” meetings to reduce dis-

tractions. Companies treat working

overtime as a problem rather than a

virtue: At Woowa Brothers, manag-

ers now call that a sign of poor

planning, not proof of an employee’s

dedication.

Companies let employees find

their own ways to work more effi-

ciently. Workers with shorter hours

tend to spend less time socializing

informally but more often get to-

gether after work. Boundaries be-

tween work and personal time get

stronger.

Organizational and cultural

changes allow companies to main-

tain the same levels of productivity

and profitability—or raise them.

Microsoft Japan made waves in No-

vember by reporting that produc-

tivity rose nearly 40% during a

summer trial of four-day weeks,

while electricity costs dropped 23%.

Woowa Brothers said that its reve-

nue grew 10-fold during three years

of shortening hours. The Glasgow

call center Pursuit Marketing said

that productivity rose by 30% with

a four-day week.

Shorter hours can also bring

companies other benefits.

More camaraderie.We tend to

think that long hours help to forge

closer teams. But rising to the chal-

lenge of figuring out how to do five

days’ work in four, breaking down

and rebuilding jobs, building a new

Companies are learning that

shrinking workweeks or workdays can lead

to more engaged, productive employees—

and higher profits.

Shorter

Hours Make

Stronger

Businesses

WORD ON

THE STREET

BEN

ZIMMER

DURING THE PRESIDENTIAL

primary season, Sen. Bernie

Sanders has been assailed by

Republicans and moderate

Democrats alike over one con-

tentious word: “socialism.”

Mr. Sanders proudly de-

scribes himself as a proponent

of “democratic socialism” on

the Scandinavian model, which

he takes pains to differentiate

from the authoritarian social-

ism of Communist regimes such

as the former Soviet Union. But

as he has become the Demo-

cratic front-runner, his primary

opponents have increasingly

pointed out favorable com-

ments he made in the past

about aspects of the Soviet

Union and Cuba, to paint him

as too ideologically extreme.

[Socialism]

culture and doing something that

many people would regard as im-

possible, brings employees together

and increases their loyalty to each

other and the company.

More independent thinking.

Shortening the workweek can make

employees more invested in the

company’s fortunes, encouraging

them to innovate.

After moving to a four-day week

at the San Diego real-estate firm

The Goodall Group, employees

started developing new initiatives

and experiments to get things done

more effectively. “They started to

feel more like owners,” founder

Steve Goodall says. “All I did was

give them a day off.”

Better recruitment and retention.

Companies with shorter hours at-

tract top talent. Japanese group-

ware company Cybozu says that

shorter workweeks help them to

compete with Microsoft and Sam-

sung. At the Glebe, a Virginia nurs-

ing home, annual turnover among

nurses’ aides fell from 128% to 44%

after they moved to a 30-hour week.

Narrower gender gaps. Working

mothers are sought after by busi-

nesses with shortened hours that

need employees who can prioritize,

maintain work-life boundaries and

take commitments seriously.

Chris Downs, co-founder of the

London design firm Normally, says

that his firm’s four-day week

“makes it possible for brilliant, ex-

perienced, super-focused and pro-

ductive women to come back into

work and not feel any less than any-

one else in that situation.” And ev-

erybody works a shorter week, so

parents aren’t stigmatized for leav-

ing work early.

For many industries, we should

no longer argue about whether the

four-day week or six-hour day could

work. Instead the questions are how

companies will make it work. As

Anna Ross, CEO of the Australian

cosmetic company Kester Black, put

it, “We work four days a week be-

cause, after a three-day weekend,

anything is possible.” It’s time for

more companies to make the same

discovery.

Dr. Pang is a consultant who has

been a visiting scholar at Stan-

ford and Oxford universities. This

essay is adapted from his new

book, “Shorter: Work Better,

Smarter and Less—Here’s How,”

which will be published on March

10 by PublicAffairs.

Microsoft

Japan made

waves by

reporting

productivity

rose nearly

40% during

a trial

of four-day

weeks.

REVIEW

H

ow can you identify

your company’s most

dedicated, creative

workers, the ones

best able to embrace

challenges and adapt to changes?

Ask them to work a shorter week

without reducing their salaries.

In the past year, a few companies

have received attention for reducing

working hours, but a movement has

been quietly building for years. In

Sweden, mechanics at the Toyota

Gothenburg service center have

worked 6-hour shifts and 30-hour

weeks since 2003. AE Harris, a Bir-

mingham, U.K., metal fabricator, be-

gan a 36-hour, four-day week in

2006. Australian software company
      Icelab moved to 32-hour, four-day
      weeks two years later. Korean e-
      commerce giant Woowa Brothers, in
      an industry notorious for long
      workweeks, has gradually shrunk to
      35 hours.
      Obviously, employees benefit
      when companies shorten working
      hours. But it turns out that compa-
      nies can benefit, too. Making the
      change spurs staffs to collaborate
      more effectively, prioritize more
      ruthlessly and develop deep respect
      for one another’s time. Leaders gain
      time to scan the horizon, incubate
      new ideas and recover from their
      weekly pressures.
      Of course, this doesn’t work ev-
      erywhere. Some companies find it
      too disruptive. Financial setbacks
      can push companies to forego ex-
      perimenting and return to tradi-
      tional schedules. Industries that de-
      pend on billing clients by the hour
      may never make the jump.
      But I’ve studied more than a hun-

BYALEXSOOJUNG-KIMPANG

ROBERT NEUBECKER

The uses

of ‘‘socialism”

on the campaign trail, for and

against, belie the complexities

of its history—which happens

to have roots in the home state

of Mr. Sanders, Vermont.

In its current meaning,

“socialism” chiefly relates to

economic theories of social

organization that advocate

for collective ownership and

control over the production

and distribution of goods.

But in 1801, before those theo-

ries were elaborated by Karl

Marx and other 19th-century

thinkers, a Vermont newspaper

presented “socialism” as one

of many potential “isms” in a

lighthearted bit of verse.

On June 27 of that year, the

Weekly Wanderer of Randolph,

Vt., published an anonymous

poem titled, “On the Termina-

tion ‘Ism.’” It began, “How of-

ten has this little word / In

genteel arguments occurr’d; /

As tho’ the soul of SOCIALISM

/ Must be transmitted thro’ a

PRISM.” The versifier goes on

to name various doctrines end-

ing in the suffix “ ism,” such as

“atheism,” “universalism,” and

“federalism,” before appealing

for Heaven to “shield my bones

from RHEUMATISM / And I’ll

be proof ’gainst DEVILISM.”

The poem must have gar-

nered some local popularity,

because a revised version ap-

peared in 1807 in another

newspaper, the Vermont Pre-

cursor, published in the state

capital, Montpelier. But the

item would remain largely for-

gotten until a decade ago, when

Fred R. Shapiro, an associate li-

brary director at Yale Law

School and editor of “The Yale

Book of Quotations,” discovered

it by searching for early exam-

ples of “socialism” in a digi-

tized newspaper database.

At the time, the earliest ac-

cepted use of the word in Eng-

lish recorded in the Oxford

English Dictionary was from

1833. When Mr. Shapiro an-
      nounced his discovery on the
      mailing list of the American
      Dialect Society, he marveled
      that it seemed “too good to be
      true.” The O.E.D. accepted the
      citation and currently lists it
      as the first known use.
      While Mr. Shapiro is uncer-
      tain what “socialism” could
      have meant in the 1801 con-
      text, the O.E.D. editors surmise
      that it referred to “the theory
      of social organization under
      the social contract,” which had
      been popularized by the
      French philosopher Jean-
      Jacques Rousseau.
      Similar words had already
      been used in European lan-
      guages in the 18th century,
      such as French “socialisme,”
      Italian “socialismo,” and Ger-
      man “Sozialismus.” And the re-

lated word “socialist” ap-

peared slightly earlier, dated

by Mr. Shapiro to 1793, when it

could simply mean a person

living in society.

“Socialism” and “socialist”

started taking on their more

modern guise only later, espe-

cially when the terms got asso-

ciated with the writings of

Marx and his collaborator

Friedrich Engels. For Marx and

Engels, socialism represented

an intermediate stage between

capitalism and communism—

though, confusingly, they often

used the words “socialism”

and “communism” inter-

changeably.

The fuzziness of “socialism”

continued into the 20th cen-

tury, when it became a major

buzzword in U.S. politics. Es-

pecially after Lenin established

Soviet-style socialism, the

term served as a frequent rhe-

torical bogeyman.

In a 1952 campaign speech,

Harry Truman complained of

its use as “a scare word they

have hurled at every advance

the people have made in the

last 20 years.” Lately, that

quote has been making the

rounds online—now repur-

posed as a retort to critics of

Mr. Sanders and his fellow

democratic socialists. JAMES YANG

Marx Made It Famous,

But Vermont

Got There First