In Russia, one of the banks “decided” to experiment with a four-day working week – Rosbalt

Since January of this year, Sovcombank has begun an experiment to transfer part of its employees to a four-day work week.

It is held among the employees of the back office of the bank, who are able to work remotely, as well as the subsidiary company Sovcombank Technologies. We are talking about IT specialists and employees of other departments, including top managers, RBC was told in a credit institution.

“If we get unambiguous positive results in the experiment with a four-day working week, we will be ready to scale it up and introduce such a schedule for the most productive back office employees who are 100% of the time away,” said a representative of Sovcombank.

According to him, the extension of such a work schedule will depend on the results of the work and the implementation of all the tasks set on time.

However, the agency points out, other banks are not yet considering abandoning the standard five-day period.

The idea to reduce the working week in Russia to four days was proposed by the current deputy chairman of the Security Council and ex-president of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev, when he was head of government. In the summer of 2019, he announced the need to rethink the approach to organizing labor in the country. And later, in February 2021, Medvedev again voiced the same idea, emphasizing that the coronavirus pandemic made it relevant again, and later suggested conducting a similar experiment in certain regions or companies. However, the Ministry of Labor indicated that there are no prerequisites for abandoning the five-day work in Russia now, an alternative mode of work is being introduced in the country – remote employment.

At the same time, as shown by a recent study by the Rabota.ru service, the majority of Russians (78%) agree with the statement that the more days off, the better, they have a positive attitude towards reducing working days to four per week, RIA reports. News”.

At the same time, 47% of respondents assessed the readiness of their company for a four-day working week negatively. In their opinion, such a work schedule does not suit them. However, 21% of respondents noted that such a transition is quite real, but it will take more than six months. Another 15% believe that reducing the working week will require several months, and 11% indicated a timeframe of several weeks. The complete readiness of their companies for the transition to a shorter working week was stated by 6% of respondents.