Unilever to trial four-day work week

Monday, 30 November 2020

A Kiwi company's trial of a four-day working week has been a massive success - and it wants to keep going.

Unilever New Zealand will trial a four-day work week at full pay, becoming the first global company to do so in Aotearoa.

All 81 Kiwi employees of the consumer goods colossus will be eligible to take part in the trial, during which they will be paid 100 per cent of their salaries while working 80 per cent of the time.

Unilever New Zealand managing director Nick Bangs said momentum for a four-day work week was growing in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the team was excited to launch the trial.

“Unilever New Zealand’s strong growth trajectory makes this the perfect time in our life cycle to drive something new and ambitious.”

The consumer goods colossus Unilever has taken a stand against the use of social media “influencers”.

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The shift was about removing barriers to value creation and focusing on creating impact and delivering results, he said.

“Our goal is to measure performance on output, not time. We believe the old ways of working are outdated and no longer fit for purpose.”

Unilever had drawn inspiration from trust company Perpetual Guardian, where a four-day week has been the norm since late 2018.

Unilever New Zealand managing director Nick Bangs says the old ways of working are outdated and not fit for purpose.

Bangs said New Zealand was a great environment for Unilever to trial the four-day week, as the multinational company doesn’t have any manufacturing sites here.

”[Unilever] will have to think about how we do this with manufacturing, but we haven’t dismissed expanding to include manufacturing,” he said.

“But it’s good to be able to test the system with office-based staff and people working in different parts of New Zealand. We have a big enough but also small enough team here to test it out and get some good learnings.”

To enable the move, Unilever will train some of its employees in Agile, a project management method that breaks work into short phases with frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans.

The Agile system eliminates work that adds no value along with unnecessary bureaucracy.

“We’re not working to a playbook. We trust our employees to do the best for the company and will give them the support and resources to innovate and make their own decisions,” Bangs said.

Unilever will be working with the University of Technology (UTS) in Sydney to measure qualitative results of the trial.

“Gaining flexibility in work-life balance can mean that women and men, younger and older, can both take time off to be with family and friends, and have the energy and focus to pursue their career ambitions,” Bangs said.

“Essentially, this is about a holistic understanding of how work and life fit together, and improving mental and physical wellbeing.”

The New Zealand trial will run until December 2021.