\u201cI\u2019m a commission-only salesman, so I have to be constantly selling to get paid,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone in the office works pretty long hours, but I don\u2019t have anyone working underneath me, so I\u2019m a bit more hands-on, and it takes a bit more time.\u201d<\/p>\n
By contrast, Santaguida said some of his extended family work far fewer hours.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a cousin overseas in Italy who only works three months of the year,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably partly a cultural difference, but it\u2019s also not very expensive to live over there, while Sydney has one of the most expensive property markets in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows 6.5 per cent of employed people in Australia were juggling jobs in March. And according to the OECD, Australians worked an average of 1645 hours in 2023, or just under 32 hours a week \u2013 more than the 26 hours a week worked by Germans and the 31 hours worked in Japan.<\/p>\n
Research by Eliza Littleton, a senior economist at the Australia Institute\u2019s Centre for Future Work, found in 2022 that Australian workers put in four hours and 20 minutes of unpaid overtime a week \u2013 or about six weeks of unpaid overtime a year. For full-time workers, it was closer to five hours a week.<\/p>\n
When it comes to paid overtime, Littleton said Australians often took on more hours than workers in the US, Canada and Britain.<\/p>\n
But a raft of major companies have looked at shaking up that trend, including health insurance behemoth Bupa, consumer goods giant Unilever and furniture conglomerate IKEA. They are among the businesses that have trialled, and in some cases adopted, reduced working hours.<\/p>\n
Last week, the largest-scale research to date<\/a> on the four-day workweek, which looked at 3000 employees of 141 companies across six countries over a six-month period, found workers were happier, less burnt out, had higher job satisfaction and improved mental and physical health working fewer days. They remained just as productive.<\/p>\n Unilever finished its almost three-year trial of a four-day workweek in June, saying that while it had provided \u201cinvaluable learnings which have enabled us to drive productivity\u201d, the change was too rigid.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no one-size-fits-all approach to flexibility,\u201d a Unilever spokesperson said, noting the company had replaced the trial with an \u201ceveryday flexibility\u201d approach aimed at giving employees \u201cthe autonomy to manage their workload in a way that works best for them\u201d.<\/p>\n Bupa started trialling nine-day working fortnights for some teams in November 2023. The company said the outcome was not a reflection on the success of the trial, despite discontinuing the work arrangements last month.<\/p>\n \u201cOur people responded positively to the pilot, and we saw improvements in areas we were monitoring, including productivity, engagement and retention, wellbeing and flexibility,\u201d a Bupa spokesperson said.<\/p>\n But they said the trial highlighted the importance of ensuring adequate team coverage when people used flexible working arrangements to ensure there were no gaps in dealing with customers and service delivery.<\/p>\n IKEA Australia\u2019s co-worker experience manager, Greg Day, said the option to request a four-day workweek, which was included in the company\u2019s most recent enterprise agreement, gave the company a competitive edge.<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n \u201cWe have shifts available in our stores across most hours of the day, seven days per week,\u201d Day said. \u201cThat makes IKEA an attractive employer to join, and one to stay with through different life stages when flexibility around working hours and days is important.\u201d<\/p>\n Gerard Dwyer, national secretary of the SDA, the union for retail, fast food, warehouse and online retail workers, said higher annual leave provisions and four-day work weeks could boost productivity.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere applied equitably, as is the case at IKEA, it contributes to a healthier work-life balance as well as a more efficient and effective workplace,\u201d Dwyer said.<\/p>\n While Australians\u2019 average incomes had generally continued to grow over the past few decades, Australia ranked relatively poorly when it came to work-life balance<\/a>, according to the OECD, trailing most other Western countries.<\/p>\n Santaguida said his social life had taken a hit, and he would like to wind back his working hours in a few years\u2019 time to travel. He said that, for now, he is eager to make more money. \u201cI still want to get to that next level, doing a million dollars a year in commission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n