The Tokyo metropolitan government will allow its staff to work four days a week: this is an experiment that will start next April and designed to reverse the country’s low birth rate, considering the fact that the Japanese population is towards the 16th consecutive year of decline.
L’approccio “four-on, three-off” based on work-life balance allows citizens of the largest metropolis in the world to change their working hours to completely free up one day of their choice each week. We will start with the municipal administration employees. Increased free time and greater flexibility should, in theory, make raising children less daunting.
“We will continue to review our work style flexibly, so that no one has to sacrifice their career due to life events such as childbirth and childcare,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said during the latest town assembly meeting.
Tokyo’s four-day week experiment follows similar programs in local governments in prefectures and cities across Japan. Globally, 4 Day Week Global, a UK-based non-profit organization that promotes the many benefits of a shorter working week and has conducted pilot experiments in 20 countries to evaluate the impact of a shorter working week, is already operational. policy that often meets strong resistance from traditionalists.
The founders of 4 Day Week Global described the step taken by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as “extraordinary, in a country that has a reputation for being inflexible in this field and which has a real word – karoshi – which indicates death from overwork”. The founder Charlotte Lockhart explained that where this protocol is implemented, “productivity increases, the ability to attract and retain staff improves and sick days are halved.”