Productivity Soared By 40% After Trying 4-Day Workweek In Japan: Microsoft

A rising digit of smaller firms is taking up a 4-day workweek. The findings of the latest experiment at Microsoft propose it could give a boost to the largest businesses. This summer, a program named “Work Life Choice Challenge” was initiated by the company in Japan. With this initiative, in August, the company would shut down its workplaces every Friday, giving its entire staff an extra day off every week. The findings were promising: as the work duration was slashed radically, productivity—calculated by sales per worker—soared up by nearly 40% compared to previous year’s same period, said the firm.

Apart from decreasing the working period, managers advised employees to reduce the time spent by them in replying to emails and meetings. They proposed that conferences should not take more than 30 Min. Also, workers were motivated to reduce meetings overall by utilizing an online messaging app. The impacts were extensive. Over 90% of 2,280 staff of Microsoft in Japan later stated they were influenced by the new initiatives, as per the firm.

Microsoft, by closing earlier every week, was also capable of saving on other resources, like electricity. The program is timely. The company, for its part, states it will carry out one more test later this year in Japan. It intends to ask workers to bring up with new steps to enhance efficiency & work–life balance, and also will ask other firms to join the program.

Likewise, Microsoft, at its annual Ignite IT conference, declared its first new commercial product, Project Cortex. The overall notion here is to enable workers to swiftly locate data that has spread out throughout documents in several services of Microsoft and makes it accessible both through searches and in the shape of hover-links within Microsoft products such as the Outlook, Office apps, and Teams.