4 days in­s­tead of 5: One in th­ree em­ployees would like a full-time job with a shorter working week

4 Tage statt 5: Je­der drit­te Ar­beit­neh­men­de hät­te ger­ne ei­nen Voll­zeit­job mit ver­kürz­ter Ar­beits­wo­che / Rand­stad Ar­beits­ba­ro­me­ter 2023

Two thirds of em­ployees in Ger­ma­ny are in fa­vor of si­gni­fi­cant­ly more fle­xi­bi­li­ty in full-time work. Only 32.6% are still sa­tis­fied with the tra­di­tio­nal working week. The­se are the fin­dings of a re­cent Rand­stad stu­dy.

How will we work in the fu­ture? 4 days in­s­tead of 5? With 32, 40 or 42 hours per week? The de­ba­te about fu­ture-ori­en­ted working time mo­dels is not just a con­cern for em­ploy­ers, but has also long sin­ce re­a­ched the po­li­ti­cal are­na and was one of the key to­pics at the World Eco­no­mic Fo­rum in Da­vos at the be­gin­ning of the year. In view of the se­rious la­bor shorta­ge, more and more com­pa­nies are ex­pe­ri­men­ting with dif­fe­rent working time mo­dels in or­der to at­tract ap­pli­cants and re­tain exis­ting staff – in­clu­ding a lar­ge-sca­le pi­lot pro­ject for a 4‑day week in the UK.

Wo­men (42.1%) want a shorter week more of­ten than men (29.9%)

But what do em­ployees ac­tual­ly want? The la­test Rand­stad Work Ba­ro­me­ter 2023 shows: More than one in th­ree em­ployees in Ger­ma­ny would pre­fer a shorter working week in their full-time job. 36.1% of re­spond­ents would like to ful­fill their cur­rent weekly working hours on fe­wer days – for ex­am­p­le by in­tro­du­cing a 4‑day week. The de­si­re for a shorter working week in a full-time job is par­ti­cu­lar­ly high among ol­der em­ployees: Among 45- to 54-year-olds, 42.4% are in fa­vor of this; among 55- to 67-year-olds, the fi­gu­re is 40.1%. At 42.1%, wo­men ex­press this wish more fre­quent­ly than men (29.9%). In con­trast, 32.6% of Ger­man em­ployees pre­fer the tra­di­tio­nal 5‑day week from Mon­day to Fri­day with working hours from 9 am to 5 pm. It is striking that em­ployees with a high le­vel of edu­ca­ti­on (35.5%) in par­ti­cu­lar fa­vor the 9‑to‑5 mo­del. 10.7% of re­spond­ents would like their working hours to be com­ple­te­ly fle­xi­ble bet­ween Mon­day and Fri­day. 9.2% would like a 5‑day week that can fle­xi­bly in­clude all days of the week and the­r­e­fo­re also the weekend.

One in five has al­re­a­dy re­si­gned due to a lack of fle­xi­bi­li­ty

„As you can see, the­re is no one-size-fits-all so­lu­ti­on. The­re is no one so­lu­ti­on that fits all em­ployees,“ says Ri­chard Ja­ger, CEO of the Rand­stad Group Ger­ma­ny. „More and more em­ployees want to ad­apt their working hours to their li­ves in­s­tead of the other way around. Com­pa­nies are faced with the dif­fi­cult task of main­tai­ning pro­duc­ti­vi­ty on the one hand and of­fe­ring their em­ployees fle­xi­bi­li­ty on the other. Ho­we­ver, the Ger­man-spea­king la­bor mar­ket is still too in­fle­xi­ble and slow in many are­as. De­ve­lo­ping fur­ther here will be one of the ma­jor chal­lenges fa­cing the Ger­man eco­no­my.“ Time fle­xi­bi­li­ty is one of the de­cisi­ve cri­te­ria when choo­sing an em­ploy­er: 77.0% of em­ployees say it is im­portant or even very im­portant. This puts it well ahead of lo­ca­ti­on fle­xi­bi­li­ty (58.6%). 46.1% would not even ac­cept a job that did not of­fer them suf­fi­ci­ent time fle­xi­bi­li­ty. 20.6% of em­ployees have al­re­a­dy quit a job due to a lack of fle­xi­bi­li­ty – among 18 to 24-year-olds, the fi­gu­re is as high as 38.2%.