The crude oil crisis and the economic downturn is forcing organisations to start thinking creatively, to cut costs. The State of Utah has become the first state in USA to make a mandatory four day a week working from Monday through Thursday for a majority of the employees. USA today reports that Gov Huntsman says he's  making the change to reduce the state's carbon footprint, increase energy efficiency, improve customer service and provide workers more flexibility.

The change will apply to about 17,000 employees, roughly 80% of the state workforce, Huntsman says. Public universities, the state court system, prisons and other critical services will be exempt. Residents still will have sufficient access to state offices, many staying open from 7 a.m.- 6 p.m., and more than 800 state services are available online, he says.

In the US, many states and local counties have given the option to employees to work four day week. Instead of working 8 hours a day, five days a week, work for 10 hours a day 4 days a week to make for the 40 hour workweek. World Bank has allowed 25% of the staffers to do four day work week, every alternate week.

This may work for government offices, it will be interesting to look, if it will work for business. It may work in discrete manufacturing set-ups like automobiles, job shops, consumer durables, electronics. With the demand slowdown, it may make sense to keep the factories open only four days a week. Process industries by their very nature have to be kept running.

In service sector businesses  like banks, airlines, hotels, retail, with customers demanding high level of service almost on a 24x7 basis, businesses can ill-afford to go on a four day work week.

It may be an interesting problem to look at designing an organisation for a service business, where the employees enjoy a four day work week but the customers are provided 24x7 service.  It would mean drawing up a complex schedule of shifts and weekly offs (3 day offs) for a large number of customer-facing jobs. Also, providing adequate supervision and back-office support to keep the operations going without drop in service levels.

An effective implementation of a four day work week in the growing service sector, could even be the solution to creating more employment opportunities for the Indian educated unemployed.