On Tuesday, the distributor of Lipton’s tea, Dove soap and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream announced that it would reduce working hours for all its employees in New Zealand, allowing them to decide which four days of work each week Would like it.
The trial starts this month, and lasts for a year. The consumer giant has 81 staff members in the country who will be allowed to work on a program compressed with full pay as the University of Technology Sydney in Australia helps track their progress.
Unilever said that if all goes well, the company will consider whether to shake its workflow on a larger scale.
“We hope the trial will adopt ways of working at Unilever, providing tangible benefits for employees and for the business,” said Nick Bangs, managing director of Unilever New Zealand, in a statement.
“This is an exciting moment for our team and a validation of the catalytic role Kovid-19 has played blending standard work practices.”
Bangs said his team was inspired by the findings of that case study, and “began to believe that old ways of working are outdated.”
In May, Ardern shared a suggestion discussing ways to revive domestic tourism in his country. She said businesses had their own discretion to make such decisions, meriting the idea that it could give domestic travelers “flexibility in terms of their travel and their vacation.”
The results were promising: while time spent at work was dramatically cut, productivity – measured by sales per employee – increased by about 40% compared to the same period last year.
As a result, Microsoft announced that it would be in Japan with another experiment, and asked other companies to join the initiative as well.
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