Free Friday also arrives in Asia – Corriere.it

Samsung Electronics, the Korean consumer electronics and microchip manufacturing giant, has decided to change its labor policy. With the aim of retaining the best talent within the company and fully reaping the benefits of flexible working, the company has decided that starting next week all group workers residing in Korea and employed in the country will be able to take advantage of a short 4-day week once a month. In practice, they will have one Friday free every four. However, the news, reported by Bloomberg, does not represent an absolute novelty for the Korean economic system. Even the competitor group SK Hynix, last year adopted a similar policy allowing its employees to have one Friday off per month when the number of weekly working hours exceeds 40 hours.

Professional/personal life balance

Analysts underline that it is in any case a cultural revolution for a country characterized by an extremely conservative and traditionalist work culture. In fact, it is estimated that Korean workers devote themselves to productive activities in the company for an average of 200 working hours more per year than the average of OECD countries. The opening to free time is therefore achieved with the aim of meeting the needs of the younger generations, who push for a better balance between personal life and professional life. Millenials and generation Z, i.e. workers under 30, currently make up 3-4 of Samsung’s workforce globally and consequently the company’s sensitivity to the need to leave more space for personal life of its employees. The company intends to create a new “Friday culture” that helps employees grasp social trends and nurture personal talents,” a company spokesman summarized.

The many cases in Europe and in Italy

Samsung’s decision comes in the wake of similar decisions taken by many companies in Europe and the United States. Started Iceland between 2015 and 2019 testing the 4-day week for 35-36 hours of work. Firms reported 86% higher productivity of employees and consolidated the experiment. But on the wave of social changes and work habits induced by the Covid-19 pandemic that the four-day week has experienced a real boom. Between June and December 2022 in Great Britain, 61 companies with almost three thousand employees experienced the Four Days Week. Spain and Belgium have also gone a long way with experimentation that has recently taken hold in Sweden, Japan and the United States as well. In Italy Intesa Sanpaolo, the largest national banking group, has offered its 74,000 employees the possibility of concentrating the total weekly hours on 4 days instead of 5 and to extend smartworking on a voluntary basis up to 120 days a year. Other Italian companies that have adopted similar solutions include Team System, Mondelez International, PA Advice, Velvet Media, Awin Italia.

Keynes: 15-hour workweek

Although the experience of the 4-day week is spreading like wildfire in the main advanced economies, we are still far from having reached the equilibrium point predicted by the economist John Maynard Keynes in 1928. Taking into account technological progress and The resulting increase in productivity Keynes predicted that the work week would be 15 hours within a century. There are just 5 years left to verify the fulfillment of that prophecy. so unlikely that the adoption of revolutionary technologies such as artificial intelligence will not burn the time to achieve such a goal?