Microsoft Japan’s Three-Day Weekend Experiment [POLL]

When it gets down to it, most of us start looking forward to the weekend as soon as the alarm clock goes off Monday morning! Who doesn't want a longer weekend? Well, Microsoft Japan decided to try out a four-day work week to see what would happen. The "Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019" saw the company closing its doors on Friday for every week for a month, giving its 2,300 employees a three-day weekend.

The results showed less electricity usage (by 23.1%), fewer days off taken (down 25.4%) and fewer printed pages (58.7%). And most importantly for business, productivity went up by almost 40%. Other changes that helped with productivity included capping meetings at 30 minutes or just cutting to virtual meetings/email memos. 92.1% of employees enjoyed the change, and it looks as though Microsoft will repeat the experiment again.

It was not apparent how many hours a week they worked in that four-day period, but I'm sure it was a lot -- especially after a government study back in 2016 found that nearly a quarter of companies in Japan have workers putting in more than 80 hours of overtime each month.

Would you be down for a four-day work week?