Could the Iran War Accelerate the Shift to Four‑Day Workweeks?

Rising energy costs from the Iran war are renewing debate over whether companies could cut the workweek to conserve fuel.

BY BRUCE CRUMLEY @BRUCEC_INC

Iranian container ship ‘Nora’ moored in Kalundborg Harbor, Denmark. Photo: Getty Images

As the nearly five-week war with Iran sends prices of gas, food, and other goods ever higher, some observers are wondering whether the otherwise grim situation may eventually produce an unexpectedly happy development for employees. Not only might the increasing cost of fuel convince more businesses to again relax recently tightened work from office requirements, this thinking goes, but many could go even farther by cutting the work week to just four days as a way of conserving energy.

There are several reasons why speculation about a four-day workweek in response to the Iran war has been increasing of late.

The first is that it revives arguments some economists, academics, and progressive business leaders have made in recent years in favor of cutting the workweek a day. Enduring productivity gains made by employees during the past century, they argue, would permit employers to operate only four days without output dipping.

What would employers get in exchange? Some businesses and countries have tested the four-day model, with many reporting productivity actually increased as a result, while burnout and turnover rates plunged. Win-win, supporters say.

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The second reason is that while paying workers five-day salaries to work only four may sound ruinous to many business owners, the idea of letting staff work from home was also a crazy notion until the pandemic turned it into an obligation to just keep operating.

Some countries have already cut the workweek

And finally, several Asian nations including Vietnam, Pakistan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines have all issued businesses directives to help conserve increasingly tight fuel supplies. In addition to urging more remote work, many of those countries have also already cut the workweek to four days.

In other words, just as remote work wasn’t something most employers ever would have imagined—or allowed—before the pandemic imposed it upon them, some experts say disruptions from the Iran war could force a shrinkage of workweek.“Previously, a four-day workweek was mostly theoretical or confined to a handful of pilot programs,” Mercer chief workforce strategist William Self  said in a recent Fortune article that examined possibilities the war’s consequences could produce a three-day weekend. “Now you have some governments weighing in as a matter of public policy and major employers adopting it, and they’re doing so in the same news cycle. That’s a different situation than we’ve been in before.”

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