There are few countries that have a single word to talk about the consequences of taking work to the extreme, and Japan is one of them. We are talking about a country where more than 10% of the population does not hesitate to exceed 60 hours of work per week, so in the face of that workaholism, getting the four-day workweek to work there is a substantial challenge. One that Microsoft did not hesitate to tackle five years ago.
The experiment, which aimed to persuade Japan’s workaholics to accept a shortened workday and embrace a four-day week, also had two additional challenges to meet. On one hand it needed to demonstrate how the newly launched Microsoft Teams could make that change possible. On the other, it was meant to be the perfect lure to attract talent to Microsoft offices under the promise of the 100-80-100 framework.
The Four-Day Week in Japan
As with other projects from the 4 Day Week organization, the objective is to gather enough evidence to prove that the 100-80-100 model, which refers to 100% of salary, 80% of hours, and 100% efficiency; is viable in any context and culture. Let’s put it this way: if it could work among Japan’s workaholics, it could work anywhere.
With five consecutive Fridays off and no salary cut for 2,300 employees, Microsoft promoted the use of Teams to cut meetings from 60 minutes to 30 minutes, with a maximum of five attendees, and forced its employees to be more proactive instead of sinking into a tangle of emails. The combination, along with the challenge of doing the same in four days instead of five, sent productivity figures through the roof.
Productivity per employee rose by as much as 39.9% compared with the same month the year before, the office’s electricity consumption fell by 23% compared with the same period, and paper usage dropped by 60%. In short, a brutal success in the most challenging possible environment that, in addition to putting Microsoft Teams even more on the map, served as an incentive to attract and retain talent both in Japan and abroad.
After the success, the team announced a new challenge toward the end of that same year before deciding whether they would adopt the four-day week as a norm, but luck would have it that all of this happened in 2019 and, with the onset of the pandemic, remote work and hybrid models ended up dominating the conversation. Although Microsoft’s example in Japan has become one of the most notable demonstrations of the benefits of the four-day workweek, the world still seems hesitant to take the final leap.
Image | Fueteruyo on Midjourney
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