Compressed workweek pilot aims to boost staff morale in Sackville
Workers for the town of Sackville will be trying something a little different this summer, working a compressed workweek of just four days, but with longer hours for those days. CAO Jamie Burke says the new scheduling system will run for three months, from June through August, and then be evaluated as a longer term option for the town’s workforce.
Hear this story as reported on Tantramar Report:
One of the inspirations for the experiment is a small municipality in Nova Scotia, which was one of the first in Canada to try and later adopt a compressed workweek. Barry Carroll is the CAO of the municipality of the District of Guysborough, on the southeastern tip of mainland Nova Scotia. He credits the pandemic with the municipality’s experiment. “It’s kind of a good news story coming out of COVID for us,” says Carroll.
At the outset of the pandemic, Guysborough had split their workforce of about 60 into two teams, and alternated days on site and working from home. The flexibility was popular, as was the ability to keep in operations during COVID. Then one day, Carroll was listening to a federal COVID briefing when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned the four-day workweek, and the idea was planted. “We said, look, maybe this is something that we can try on a pilot basis,” Carroll recalls.
The municipality implemented a nine month pilot starting in June 2020, with two teams working compressed four-day weeks, either from Monday to Thursday, or Tuesday to Friday.… Continue