Multiple matching
You are going to read an extract. For questions 1-10, choose from the sections (A-E). The sections may be chosen more than once.
One Less Day: Promise and Pitfalls of the Four-Day Week
The impact of the four-day working week on productivity and well-being
The Productivity Argument
The four-day week is often sold as a simple trade: fewer hours, same output. In some industries that sounds plausible, even exciting. If you remove the dead time—long meetings that could have been emails, constant checking of messages, the slow drift between tasks—people can deliver in four days what used to take five. I’ve seen teams become almost competitive about how efficiently they can work, and managers are surprised by the results. But there’s a catch that enthusiasts sometimes gloss over: not all work can be compressed. A nurse can’t ‘focus harder’ to shorten a shift, and a customer support team still faces the same volume of calls. In those cases, the four-day week doesn’t reduce work; it redistributes it, often by hiring more staff or paying overtime. The irony is that the scheme is praised as a productivity revolution, yet in some workplaces it functions mainly as a recruitment strategy.
Which section describes a situation where cutting a day doesn’t actually reduce the amount of work, but leads to extra staffing costs instead?
In which section does the writer suggest that the four-day week can sometimes function more as a way to attract employees than as a genuine efficiency breakthrough?
Which section mentions that an extra day off may not feel restorative if it doesn’t align with the schedules of family or friends?
Which section expresses the idea that people may feel compelled to ‘earn’ the new arrangement, making them less likely to pause or ask for support?
In which section does the writer highlight resentment caused by different groups in the same organisation having unequal access to reduced hours?
Which section questions whether the public would accept paying more for certain services in order to make shorter working weeks feasible?
Which section describes how external expectations mean the ‘missing’ day can reappear through messages, deliveries, and urgent problems?
Which section contrasts two organisational responses: keeping the business open by rotating days off versus shutting completely and accepting slower replies?
In which section does the writer suggest that attempts to squeeze decisions into fewer days can initially increase meetings and ‘noise’ rather than reduce it?
Which section expresses doubt about how reliable pilot-study success claims are, because the organisations that volunteer may not represent the average workplace?
0 of 10 answered