If we want to relieve the strain of a globally growing – and commuting – population, we need to rethink how and where we work. Working more flexibly – both in timing and location – could have a massive impact on transportation and electricity production, two of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

How does it work? Organisations adopt a four-day working week, the daily head count in the office drops by approximately 20% and the number of cars on the road drops by at least a fifth. It’s a win-win-win scenario for employees, employers and the environment.

If the four-day week catches on in Auckland, for example, and organisations across the city cut down on their daily in-office head count by 20%, the number of cars on the road each day drops by at least a fifth, and by up to 40% if parents are routinely permitted to work five shorter days in order to do school drop-offs and pick-ups.

A 2017 report by the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research on the benefits from Auckland road decongestion means we know exactly what this decrease in traffic volume would mean for the city’s economy. Productivity could be boosted by at least NZ$1.3bn per annum (1.4% of Auckland’s GDP), the authors say if use of the road network could be optimised.

Additionally, if the average speed across the Auckland network was close to or equal to the speed limit (known as free-flow), the benefits of decongestion during weekdays were estimated at around NZ$3.5 m per day, or between NZ$1.4 and $1.9bn (between 1.5 and 2% of Auckland’s GDP). Imagine these results extrapolated for New York City or London or Buenos Aires.

The intensity of congestion and the lengthening of commutes are a byproduct of the way we work today, with billions of hours, dollars, fuel gallons and pounds of carbon dioxide expended each year in developed countries, where the term “rush hour” has been part of the lexicon for as long as anyone can remember. Even if we leave aside the climate change question and apply a pure economic lens, a widespread model of working which prioritises productivity and efficiency over a robotic adherence to working hours (which were once dictated by the sun and are now mostly arbitrary) is a no-brainer.

When we turn our minds to the welfare of the planet, the answer is just as obvious. The human resources department of UC Davis in 2018 bluntly made the environmental case for work flexibility: “Not going into work could be one of the most environmentally sustainable things you can do as an individual employee.”

In another 2018 study, researchers analysed data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labour Statistics and found households with longer work hours have significantly larger carbon footprints.

According to UC Davis, the two main contributors to US greenhouse gas emissions are transportation (29%) and electricity production (28%), with about 135 million Americans commuting to work. 50% of those workers have jobs they could do remotely some of the time, and the emissions-reduction value of those workers avoiding their normal commute on half of their usual work days is equivalent to removing 10 million cars from the road.

A flexible work arrangement programme at UC Davis has provided options for employees such as flexitime (altering the start or end times of the work day); a compressed week of fewer, longer days at work; and remote working for part of the week. Every option means skipping the commute or evading rush hour at least some of the time.

That could put a big dent in transport emissions: University of Reading researchers asked business leaders and owners how a four-day week would affect their commuting habits. When scaled up across the United Kingdom, workers estimated that they would drive 557.8m fewer miles per week if they worked fewer days.

Of course, none of this evidence matters unless our political and business decision-makers are willing to upend the status quo in service of our planet’s viability. Changing to a four-day working week won’t by itself solve the climate crisis, but combining it with other progressive policies will be part of the global climate mobilisation we indisputably need.

Andrew Barnes is the CEO of Perpetual Guardian. The 4 Day Week: How the Flexible Work Revolution Can Increase Productivity, Profitability and Well-being, and Create a Sustainable Future is published by Little, Brown on 6 February 2020. https://4dayweek.com/





