The Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) share a word that does not exist in the rest of the world's languages: 'arbejdsglaede'. 'Arbejds' means work and 'glaede' means happiness. So the literal translation of this concept would be “happiness at work.” A YouTube video that would make Galician-Catalan comedian Pepe Rubianes turn in his grave explains that those who identify with the 'arbejdsglaede' “like and are proud of the work they do and feel comfortable with their responsibilities, their colleagues and even with their bosses (…); In short, they are going to work with joy.”
For a decade (1997-2006), Rubianes performed his most memorable monologue, which included a parody on social functioning in Spain ('Work dignifies', remember?). How has the job market changed since then? A lot. And at the same time, very little.
Working hours in Spain have faced liberal and progressive political formations for decades; to employers and worker representatives. The last example is very recent, with the dialectical battle between the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, regarding the late closing times of restaurants. Where the Minister of Labor and Social Economy appreciates “certain risks to the mental health” of hospitality workers, Ayuso defends “freedom.” Beyond proclamations aimed at satisfying their respective hosts, the controversy has a background that puts our model of society in the focus of the debate, as the politician and former general secretary of CC pointed out following this controversy. OO. of Catalunya Joan Coscubiela in his X account:
One of the main objectives of the Government in this legislature is precisely the promotion of a future Time Use Law. The purpose, as explained to La Vanguardia by Marta Junqué, coordinator of the organization 'Time Use Initiative', which advises the Ministry of Labor on this project, is to “achieve a more balanced organization of time” and create “a new social pact that allows guarantee the right to time to citizenship in the next decade.”
Second Vice President Díaz's plan is to move from the current 40-hour week to a 32-hour week without salary reduction, a goal that would be achieved in less than a decade, according to her prospects. She proposes doing it in a progressive way: in 2025 she aims to establish a maximum working day of 37.5 hours; The next section would be 35 hours in the next legislature, a step prior to establishing 32 hours before 2034. That is, the equivalent of working one less day a week for the same salary.
Is this approach a utopia in Spain? Given how little progress has been made in the organization of work in recent decades, it would be logical to think so. However, there are already companies in our country that, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, have implemented various time regulation formulas, respecting the full salary of their employees. In all the cases analyzed by La Vanguardia, the change has resulted in an improvement in the company's productivity and the living conditions of its employees. This is Metropolitan House, a real estate development management company in the Les Corts neighborhood of Barcelona that employs 24 workers; Advantatge Consulting, an international executive profile selection consultancy with 20 employees: and the Madrid-based restaurant chain 'La Francachela', with more than 50 hospitality professionals on staff.
In the early 2000s, Miguel Ángel Angulo finished his studies in Business Administration and Management in Aarhus (Denmark). Already at that time he perceived significant differences between the Danish and Spanish labor markets: “(…) The banks only opened from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and not every day; At the same time, in Spain, there were many branches with people working even on Saturdays to do things as banal and unproductive as updating customers' notebooks,” he explains. When he joined (2003) as head of Innovation at Metropolitan House, a family property management company, Angulo proposed a first measure of time flexibility: reducing the lunch break to take off on Friday afternoons and thus facilitate work-life balance. parents with school-age children: “20 years ago, this was a rarity, at least in our sector,” he recalls.
Like many other companies and employees, the pandemic served as an incentive to promote new transformations in the business organization. “Covid made people see that there is something beyond working five days a week from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in exchange for money. The value of time has risen a lot. Working conditions now weigh more; The salary is still important, but most people prefer to work a little more each day in exchange for having Fridays off.” In January 2023, Metropolitan House implemented the 4-day workday: from 37 hours per week it went to 34 hours without reduction in payroll, distributed between Monday and Thursday (with a retainer of two employees who work on Friday mornings , up to a maximum of four a year) with flexible hours. There is only one hour to eat, and most people do it in shifts in the office. The measure represents a reduction of 15.87% of the total annual hours established by its sectoral agreement (1,484 hours per year, compared to 1,764), but is subject to maintaining the company's productivity.
Angulo proposes the change as a “measure of organizational innovation”, a way to make better use of work time and which results in greater efficiency. On the part of the company, it requires rethinking work processes. “I insisted a lot on limiting the duration and presence of people in the meetings,” he explains to us. Employees appreciate it, and in return, they are more committed: “It has improved our quality of life. Not only at the level of family conciliation, but also on a personal level: Friday is a day to do shopping, play sports, rest, eat with friends, etc.,” confesses one of the employees. “And they enter Marca and Facebook less,” Angulo intervenes, jokingly. “The thing about 'I'll leave it for tomorrow' has faded, because Tuesday is almost the middle of the week, Wednesday is almost over and the job has to go. We employees recognize and value the effort made for our well-being and that increases people's bond with the company. And between us. If there is work, you have to get it out. And if you have to come on a Friday or two, you come without anyone asking you. It is an issue of responsibility,” admits another worker.
The pandemic was also the alarm signal that Sylvia Taudien, founder of the headhunting consultancy Advantage Consulting, needed to change the pace: “At that time we worked remotely, like everyone else. The pace did not slow down, on the contrary. And when I returned I realized that I had people very exhausted. I thought about what I could offer them to improve their mental health and attract more people to the company: in January 2021 I proposed a 4-day workday with the same salary.” Three years have passed, and each of them has represented a new phase in the search for a better way to organize work in this company of 20 people, all women.
“The first year the same work hours were concentrated in four days, and everyone was delighted to have Friday off; The second year, the employees themselves asked me to decide when to take the holiday, because the model of four days of very intense work was still too rigid. Most of them kept Friday afternoon free and took the other half day when they needed it; and this year there is total autonomy: everyone takes the holiday when and how they want, and I don't even look in the time control app if they work 40 hours, 36 or 32, I only care that the projects come out...", explains Taudien, whose company received an award from Barcelona City Council in 2022 for innovation in organization and uses of time.
How have these changes impacted the company's productivity? “Our profit has tripled between 2020 and 2023,” says Taudien. And she attributes this to the fact that “we are now a more mature, agile and flexible organization. Clients have not even noticed the changes because they only receive the results, which is what is important,” she explains. The “most dedicated and efficient” employees are young women with children, she says. Most of them work part-time, something very common in Germany, the country of origin and main residence of the founder and one of the four headquarters of this company along with Barcelona, Madrid and Dubai. Not for the same salary, because according to Sylvia Taudien, the main problem in Spain is that “salaries are very low, half those in Germany. Here (she lives in Nuremberg, Bavaria), they rise an average of 10% each year. If the Government of Spain intends to reduce the hours and also the salary, it will not work,” she states emphatically.
If there is a sector that, due to its work dynamics, is reluctant to apply changes to its schedules, it is the services sector. The restaurant chain 'La Francachela', created in Madrid in 2017, was one of the hospitality businesses that operated in the traditional way: six days a week, without split shifts and all the necessary hours of customer service. Until confinement arrived: “It was chaos,” recalls María Alvárez, co-owner and co-founder of Ephimera, the parent marketing company of ‘La Francachela’. Another organization, by the way, in which the vast majority of employees are young women with children. Chance? “Super strict prevention and hygiene standards were implemented in the kitchens. We lived through it like hell: a worker became infected and you had to send the entire staff home for 15 days. Many of us had very young children at home, and that created tremendous personal tensions. Upon returning from the ERTE we realized that it was impossible to reconcile the new reality with six-day days. And on top of that, without schools,” explains Alvárez.
They established the 4-day day “as an emergency solution to a problem that will not be repeated.” But then they realized that the reduction of working hours “was a lever for many things: to produce transformations of a productive nature, to introduce technology, to change the menu, to improve the service, etc. In short: to be much more modern.” At the same time, it served to solve the problem with personnel that drags down the entire sector in Spain: “Who works six days a split day for a wage that is very similar to the minimum wage for his entire life? Who has no other option. And that is a drama for the country: we have 1.7 million people working in the hospitality industry. A disaster for people, who are where they do not want to be; and for companies, which train people who leave at the slightest opportunity. Or worse: they burn. It is as if we were dedicated to agriculture and did not take care of the countryside,” she reflects.
In the opinion of María Álvarez, “the conditions of the hospitality industry are incompatible with mental health and with any other type of health, and if we add to that the fact that most people work overtime, the situation becomes unsustainable.” What has been your solution? “Introduce innovation, technology and new ways of thinking,” she explains. “We put machinery in the kitchen and living room: vegetable cutters, industrial air fryers and an app for the customer to place their order with their mobile phone from the table,” she gives as examples. In this way they improved the processes to produce more with the same people: “It is not about hiring more and increasing my labor costs but about creating better jobs.” The 50 employees of the two 'La Francachela' establishments (there is another one about to open) work 35 hours a week spread over 4 days and with the same salary as before.
The numbers have not suffered. “Investment in machinery is not relevant compared to the hours of work you save by improving processes. These machines cost 10,000 euros. We have made profits every year after this change.” And the personal? “The people who work with us stay longer. And most importantly: we access another type of worker. They are no longer people who enter at 20 years old and at 30 are burned out because they cannot maintain the pace of working 16 hours. We offer a workplace compatible with studying or having children, so that employees are more committed. It is an honest relationship: they are there because it fits them, because they want to be there,” she says.
Countries around us such as Portugal or the United Kingdom have already carried out pilot programs for the four-day work week with encouraging results, both for companies and workers. In Spain it has also been explored with these projects, although with a smaller scope. An experience was carried out in Valencia between April and May of last year, the preliminary evaluation of which has recently been published. There is a preliminary study already completed with more specific results, associate professor of Applied Economics at the University of Valencia Joan Sanchis confirms to La Vanguardia, but with the change of municipal government in Valencia (the project was promoted by the socialists and now the PP) interest in this initiative has waned.
Even so, Spain is still very far from the consensus regarding the establishment of reduced working hours. An exhaustive report by the job portal Infoempleo and the Adecco Group published last summer indicated that 7 out of 10 companies do not see it as viable to implement a four-day week. Nor do 61% of self-employed people see it as possible. On the other hand, two out of three workers are in favor. The main reason for the rejection of employers is the lack of profit margin to maintain salaries: 69% of companies fear that the increase in costs poses a danger to the continuity of their activity; 44% believe that the application of the new labor reform will put a brake on their growth, and the same percentage is concerned about not finding suitable profiles, as well as absenteeism from work (22%).
For Joan Sanchis, one of the economists who has most investigated the viability of reducing working time in our country without harming productivity, the usefulness of the debate on 32 hours in 4 days is to propose a new, more flexible and work standard. effective: “The model of 40 full-time weekly hours, for which you are paid even for hours in which you are not actively working, does not work: we have a very high problem of unproductive presence in Spain, which also leads to health illnesses mental health and work absenteeism,” he reflects.
“There is a double reality: on the one hand, productivity has increased a lot in recent decades throughout the West, but workers have not benefited in any way, neither with higher salaries nor with reduced working hours; On the other hand, in our country we have a productivity index well below the EU average (data from EUROSTAT, 2023), despite the fact that the annual average of hours worked in Spain is one of the highest in the EU (1,577. compared to 1,332 in Germany or 1,346 in Denmark, OECD data, 2023). Therefore, the solution is not to work more, but to encourage innovation and that this leads to improvements in production,” he concludes.
