- 14 Mar 2002
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Here, all you corporate slave traders, take that!!
After spending August experimenting with a four-day workweek in a country notorious for overwork, Microsoft Japan said sales per employee rose 40 per cent compared with the same month last year. The "Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019" saw full-time employees take off five consecutive Fridays in August with pay, as well as shortening meetings to a maximum of 30 minutes and encouraging online chats over face-to-face ones. Among workers responding to a survey about the program, 92 per cent said they were pleased with the four-day week, the software maker's Japan affiliate said in a report on its website on Oct. 31. [...]
The summer trial also cut costs at Microsoft Japan, with 23 per cent less electricity consumed and 59 per cent fewer pages printed compared with August 2018, according to the report. Some Microsoft Japan managers still didn't understand the changes in working styles and some employees expressed concern that shorter workweeks would bother clients.
Four-day workweek boosted productivity by 40%, Microsoft Japan experiment shows
In a rare corporate experiment to test a four-day work system, Microsoft Corp.’s Japan branch found that their productivity improved by about 40 percent, the company said.
www.japantimes.co.jp