Some people believe that it would be beneficial if employees worked three or four days per week rather than five or six days. Why is this? Give reasons for your answers and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Сonditions under which contemporary employees are working greatly differ from what one could see at the beginning of the 20th century, especially in developed countries.

Nevertheless

, new demands emerge as the

labour

market experiences dramatic changes due to technological progress. The opinion, especially enjoying popularity nowadays, is that the working week should be shortened to 4 days. In

this

essay, the disputes over the aforementioned notions will be discussed. To start with, by having prolonged holidays, employees will perform more fruitfully. Nowadays the majority of workers are involved in mental

labour

, which, being either tedious and monotonous or creative and challenging, is generally way more exhausting.

Thus

, more rest is required for them to stay productive enough and restore their depleted resources. Another widespread problem among modern workers is burnout. Many factors may contribute to

this

,

for example

, growing social inequality and injustice, as well as a far more rapidly changing

labour

market than ever before. Our speedily developing and altering society requires us to be extremely flexible, always learning and ultimately effective, though, unfortunately, 40-hour working weeks do not induce that. Researchers sound the alarms reporting the highest rates of burnout and anxiety leading to mental disorders and low quality of life. Apart from other changes in our society required to deal with it,

such

as mental health programmes, spreading of soft-skills workshops etc., it is indeed of great importance to lower the workload so employees could spend more on their hobbies, travelling and spending time with loved ones. Summing up, even though the modern

labour

market is not experiencing many problems it used to have in the past. New challenges occur as modern labourers are not capable of maintaining a work-life balance and getting enough rest, which results in burnout and low productivity.

Thus

, shortening of working weeks might be exactly what our society needs.