Younger, office-based workers broadly support a four-day working week but do not want to have their pay cut in exchange for working fewer hours, a ACT parliamentary inquiry's survey has found.
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More than 85 per cent of respondents to the six-month long survey rated themselves as very supportive of a four-day working week.
But 78 per cent of the 1155 respondents said they did not support any reduction to pay or conditions over a shorter week, while just under 40 per cent said they would prefer a model that cut the total number of hours worked rather than compressing them into fewer but longer days.
The ACT's standing committee on economy and gender and economic wellbeing conducted the survey between July and December 2022 as part of its long-running inquiry into the future of the working week.
Just 3 per cent of survey respondents said they either opposed or were very opposed to a four-day work week, while 2 per cent of respondents said they were neutral on the issue.
The most common reason for opposing a four-day working week was the potential cost to businesses, a report on the survey results released on Tuesday said.
About 9 per cent of respondents said they would support a pay cut to work fewer days but wanted no reduction in conditions.
Less than a quarter of respondents said they would prefer to work the same number of hours as a current five-day week compressed into a four-day week, but more than 37 per cent said they did not mind compressed hours or reduced hours if a four-day working week was adopted.
The majority of survey respondents was female (64 per cent), were aged between 25 and 34 (36 per cent) or 35 and 44 (28 per cent), and worked office hours Monday to Friday (80 per cent).
Seventy-seven per cent of respondents already had access to flexible working arrangements, including working from home, and 20 per cent earned between $2000 and $2999 before tax a week.
The ACT should first seek to limit working hours to 38 a week before attempting to reduce the number of days or recast the working week, experts have previously told the inquiry.
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A submission from the Australian National University's national centre for epidemiology and population health recommended a staged approach to reducing long work hours and a trial across the information technology, nursing and teaching workforces.
"A four-day (38-hour maximum) week would be one model among several that could be trialled," the group's submission said.
"We anticipate that a focus on reducing long hours to the maximum 38-hour week will have direct improvements on the wellbeing of the ACT community, with benefits for mental health and healthy lifestyles, employment and income equality, recruitment and retention, volunteering, quality of time use, unpaid work and caring, and work-life balance."
The Australian Education Union has told the inquiry a four-day working week would help attract and retain in-demand teaching staff, while the ACT public service believes the change would come at a cost but could make it a "progressive leader".
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Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
