Soon the weekend will start on Friday. Ministry confirms the pacific over the shortening of the work week

The Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy confirmed that revolutionary changes in working time will proceed during this word of government. 2 options are considered, 1 of which will become legal: working days from Monday to Friday will be reduced by an hr compared to the current ones, or a four-day working week will be introduced. Today, everything depends on the pace of analysis and work on fresh provisions in the Work Code on working time.

According to the latest survey ClicMeeting, as many as 70 percent of employees in Poland like to reduce the working week by 1 day than shorter days.

For the second option – a four-day working week – it is possible to usage a 35-hour option, i.e. day-days shortened by an hour. Examples of specified a solution can be found, for example, in Belgium or France, where, by choosing a four-day working week, it was decided to extend working time in 4 working days.

The final solutions that will be included in the revised Labour Code will be the consequence of many discussions, as well as erstwhile investigation and consultation. In addition to reducing working time, there are many changes to the flexibility of working time.

There may be a more extremist change in the Labour Code as part of 1 amendment. For example, you can imagine specified definitive solutions that will introduce a mandatory 35-hour working week, reduced by 5 hours compared to the current 40. The decision to organise this week of work will stay up to the employer – whether it will be a 4-day week of work with extended to 9 hours of regular leave for 3 days (e.g. Monday-Wednesday) and 1 8-hour week of work on Thursday, or a five-day week of work with reduced days from 8 to 7 hours. As a result, all weekend will start on Thursday after work and last 3 days – after changes to the work code.

The trend is apparent to older people approaching retirement. They can surely feel déjà vu – like half a century ago, erstwhile there was a fight for two-day weekends: first free Saturday in a period and then all Saturdays. Today's Saturdays are obvious. Similarly, free Fridays will be inevitable. It remains to be hoped that we will not gotta wait another 50 years for this.

The changes to the Labour Code are likely to continue. The only almost certain information is that they will happen during the current government term, no later than 2027. specified a careful declaration was made by the Ministry of Labour, which began analyses to verify whether reducing working time would contribute to improving productivity – in peculiar bringing the working week to 4 days.

The alternate is simply a 35-hour working week, assuming that each of the 5 days is reduced by 1 hour.

There was akin opposition from employers before the introduction of free Saturdays. However, technology was different at the time. Only Lem wrote about autonomous shops and buses in the context of discipline fiction. And now?

Fixed work is no longer so frequently required, and if individual lacks imagination, just look at the evolution of banking. erstwhile a branch visit was essential respective times a month, now adequate erstwhile all fewer months, or even years. akin changes besides happen in public offices, even courts. Robots are starting to enter factories.

Just a small goodwill and imagination.

Of course, not everywhere human work can be replaced by machines, but greater "accessibility" of workers in industries where their presence in the company can be reduced will let for increased employment while maintaining shorter working time for all. Today, specified solutions are achievable, and company boards request to consider whether it is worth speeding up this kind of investment.

Work in 4 days alternatively of 5 is simply a trend in mature labour markets.

The request to reduce working time supports a number of economical and social arguments, and fresh technologies, including artificial intelligence, let this to be achieved. The remainder depends on goodwill, imagination and legislative action.

Poland and Poles are good examples of this problem. On the 1 hand, they have 1 of the most busy communities, on the another hand they are resistant to change, even those forced by the pandemic and its consequences.

It is so not amazing that both employers, workers and labour marketplace experts presently treat the four-day working week as an additional benefit. However, there are no shortages of braves – Herbapol, an icon of the Polish economy, announced that from 1 January 2025 it will introduce a four-day work week, seeing its competitiveness in the labour marketplace and wanting to attract the best professionals.

Similar conclusions come from Paulina King's comment, Chief People and Operations Officer of No Fluff Jobs, based on the investigation conducted by this company.

Previous investigation on working time in Poland was an introduction to current discussions.

According to various studies, Poles spend almost 40 to 43 hours a week at work, which ranks us among the most busy peoples of Europe.

Before the pandemic broke out, the common practice of distant work and the shortening of the working week seemed to be fresh ideas utilized by fewer companies. However, the fresh conditions forced companies and workers to look for fresh ways to organise work, and the changes they were afraid of brought many benefits.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the face of expanding concern for the intellectual wellness of workers, more and more people are expressing their desire to reduce working time while maintaining their current salary. For example, according to a survey conducted for the "Women in IT" study by No Fluff Jobs, 38.9 percent of respondents indicated that a 4-day week of work for them was more crucial benefit than others, specified as access to business equipment, sports card or the anticipation to participate in global projects.

The practice of working for 4 days a week has already been introduced in respective countries and companies as pilot programs, specified as the UK, Iceland or the nipponese Microsoft branch. These experiments proved to be beneficial to the productivity and satisfaction of workers.

In Poland, too, initiatives related to the shortening of the week of work appeared, e.g. Herbapol started a phased transition to a 4-day week of work.

Nevertheless, companies in which workers are curious in specified a solution anticipate further investigation results to decide on its implementation. These decisions may depend on a number of factors, specified as industry, degree of automation or competition in the market.

It is besides worth considering alternate work models specified as Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), which focuses on achieving results alternatively of the number of hours spent in the office. This kind of flexibility can be peculiarly beneficial in environments with a advanced level of trust between employers and workers.

However, although the direction towards a shorter week of work is inevitable, various concerns and challenges specified as the impact on productivity or availability in certain industries should be taken into account. These are inactive issues that request deeper analysis and discussion, but the trend shows that labour reforms aimed at this direction are inevitable.