Tech company Buffer is adopting a 4-day workweek through the end of the year to help employees deal with stress caused by coronavirus

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Tech company Buffer is adopting a 4-day workweek through the end of the year to help employees deal with stress caused by coronavirus
Joel Gascoigne is the co-founder and CEO at Buffer, the social media company that just announced a big change to company policy.Buffer
  • Buffer, a social media management software company, announced Tuesday that it's adopting a four-day workweek through the end of 2020.
  • This comes after the company experimented with a four-day workweek in May to help workers deal with the stress caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
  • Employees will get to keep their full salary despite the time reduction.
  • Using a company-wide survey, Buffer measured employee happiness, autonomy, and stress levels.
  • Company leaders saw a positive increase in worker happiness and autonomy and a significant decrease in stress levels.
  • But the four days employees worked during the experiment were not the same across the board, which caused some planning difficulties.
  • Buffer plans to keep running the four-day workweek experiment through the end of 2020 and may adjust the policy to address challenges, per a company blog post.
  • Buffer already has some progressive company policies, including a fully remote workforce, and a transparent salary formula.
  • The tech company isn't the first to experiment with the schedule. Microsoft previously tried a four-day workweek in Japan and saw a 40% jump in productivity.
  • Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang recently called on more business leaders to adopt the setup to improve Americans' mental health.
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