Jones, Phil, Calvert Jump, Robert ORCID: 0000-0002-2967-512X and Kikuchi, Lukas (2020) Public sector as pioneer: shorter working weeks as the new gold standard. Technical Report. Autonomy, Hampshire.

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Abstract

• A shorter working week in the public sector (with no loss in pay) is badly needed: burn out, work-related poor mental health and bad work-life balance plague public sector staff across organisations.
• A 32-hour week in the public sector is not just desirable for worker wellbeing and for reducing the costs of burn out and presenteeism; a 32-hour week would also create hundreds of thousands of jobs and establish a new standard for all employment in the UK.
▪ It would create between 300,000 and 500,000 new full-time
equivalent jobs in the sector.
• Public sector employment takes up a relatively high proportion of
employment in Wales, the North of England and Scotland – entailing that a 32-hour working week would benefit regions that have felt the hardship of austerity most.
• Such a policy is eminently affordable and achievable: on Autonomy’s conservative calculations a 32-hour week could cost around £9bn, but the true figure could be much lower at around £5.4bn.
▪ This figure is only 6% of the public sector employment salary bill
and just over 1% of the total government spending budget.
• In addition to the public sector pioneering through its own working practices, we outline how procurement strategies aimed at private sector partners can encourage broader change across the UK labour market.

Item Type:	Monograph (Technical Report)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Public sector, working hours, four day week
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Business Faculty of Business > Department of International Business & Economics
Related URLs:	Publisher
Last Modified:	20 Jul 2021 09:19
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/30265

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