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If you look at what the World Health Organization says,

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If you look at what the World Health Organization says,

regularly working long hours raises the risk of stroke,

of heart disease and even premature death.

Japan, for example, has such a strong culture of overwork that they even have a term for death by overwork.

Hey, I'm Hannah and this is What's in the World,

the podcast for all of your news,

trends and talking points from the BBC World Service.

What if every week we could have three mornings of lions instead of two.

The four-day work week is being trialled across the world

and for some people it feels like they're finally hitting snooze on the burnout.

A recent study found that people who work four days instead of five say

that they feel more productive and they feel better and happier working fewer hours.

But does this actually work in practice for every type of job and in every culture?

And if the results are so clear then why aren't we doing it already?

Well here in the studio Here with me to break this down is the BBC's global health reporter, Sophia Betteazer.

Hello, welcome.

Hi.

Why do we even work five days in the first place?

Something that a lot of people are probably asking.

It just feels like a routine that we've got ourselves into.

Yeah, and a lot of people don't question it, right?

But it's sort of only been the case for the last 100 years.

Before that, people actually used to work six or even seven days a week.

So yeah, it was worse.

So what happened is that at the beginning of the 20th century,

factory workers started started demanding shorter hours.

And that's how the five day week came about.

And it was then popularised by big companies like Ford,

which actually realised that if they gave people two days off,

they would come back more productive.

But if you think about it,

100 years ago, we were a society mostly based on agriculture,

on factory workers, and things have changed massively.

And yet working hours have stayed essentially the same.

That's really interesting.

If there can be change from seven or six to five,

then maybe there can actually be change from five to four.

And you have been speaking to researchers and campaigners who have been trying to make this happen.

And there have been all of these trials.

How did they work?

The four day week is based on a principle that's called 100-80-100.

So what that means is that you work for 100% of the pay,

but only 80% of the time,

as long as you keep up 100% of your productivity, right?

And the key here is that it's not about crumbing in five days worth of work into four.

So it's not about doing really long hours.

And actually, what's interesting is that research says that that's actually got,

that has the opposite effect.

So that makes, that leads to stress, to burnout.

So it's not about that.

It's about working smarter and cutting waste.

So, for example, shorter meetings,

fewer meetings, better use of technology.

And what campaigners for the four-day week are saying is that with AI now automating a lot of our tasks,

this is a really good time.

And now more than ever,

it is really possible to achieve that 180-100 goal.

And there was a study into this.

What did they find?

So the study is the biggest of its kind.

So essentially researchers from Boston College looked at 141 companies that decided to trial the four day week.

And they looked, so this was across multiple countries,

the US, Canada, the UK,

Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

And what they looked at is four components.

They looked at job satisfaction,

burnout, physical health and mental health.

And they found that overwhelmingly,

people reported being happier, being more satisfied

and being sort of more better at their jobs when they switched to a four day week.

And what's interesting is that the trial is over now,

but about 90% of the people that took part decided to keep doing it.

And the companies let them.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Because I would have thought that was one of the big barriers to this.

Bosses wanting things, not wanting change, shall we say.

But the countries you mentioned,

first of all, they're all Western countries.

Something we should probably talk about a little bit.

And the second thing is that in this study, it was self-reported, right?

So people might have just said that they were just as productive because,

to be honest, everyone...

What would you say, right?

I would like a four-day work week.

I'm really productive.

If I could do five episodes of the podcast in four days,

just give me a chance.

Well, that's the thing.

The results the research has got came from employees.

So there is a chance that they might have exaggerated the benefits because they wanted that extra day off.

And honestly, I mean, I don't blame them.

Right.

And then the other thing is that all the companies that took part in the trial,

they did it voluntarily.

So I think when you talk about a barrier being bosses who are skeptical,

clearly they were already kind of open minded and thinking about this idea.

And then the other thing,

as you said precisely, this sort of trial took part only in Western countries.

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So it doesn't really take into account how developed a country is or what work culture looks like in that country.

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For example, if you take Africa,

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a lot of people in many African countries work in the informal sector in mining.

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And so, I mean, they're nowhere near this sort of conversation.

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Were all of the companies that trialled this out,

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were they kind of standard office jobs, quite flexible ones?

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Really, it was mostly office jobs,

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but it was also restaurants,

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for example, or care sectors.

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It was a bit of a mix,

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but it is easier to implement this in an office job.

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The size of a company also matters.

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So, for example, a startup that employs 20 people,

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for them it's a lot easier to decide to try and work four days a week.

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But if you've got a big corporation with offices around the world,

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different departments, different time zones,

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a bit like the BBC,

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it's really difficult and it will definitely not look the same for everybody.

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So there are limitations to this.

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You've been speaking to people in the companies that have done some of these trials.

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What do they say?

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How do they find it?

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Yes, I wanted to speak to some employers who kind of said to me that they implemented it and it worked.

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And I spoke to Chau,

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who is from South Africa and runs a counselling centre in Cape Town.

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And he said that for him,

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implementing the four-day week was like it changed everything.

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He was managing a staff of 56 people,

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psychologists who worked at a university of 30,000 people.

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They were severely burned out.

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They were calling in sick all the time.

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They found it really difficult because,

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I mean, South Africa is one of the countries that ranks at the bottom when it comes to mental health.

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So they were constantly exposed to other people's trauma.

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and you know, they were really struggling.

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So he decided to implement a four day week.

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And interestingly, he got a lot of pushback from his employees.

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They said, well, this is never going to work.

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Yeah, they were like, this is great in theory,

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but it's never going to work.

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But he said that he did and that the results were phenomenal.

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So he said that in the year before the trial,

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the team logged 51 sick days.

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And in the year of the four-day work week,

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that dropped to just four.

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And he said that people had more time to themselves,

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so they were healthier, they were happier.

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But he said they were also better at their jobs

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because they were more focused and they showed a lot more empathy in the therapy sessions.

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Were there any companies from the trials that said we tried it out, it didn't work?

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Well, 10% of the companies in the trial decided not to implement it.

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So that's a minority, but that number is still there.

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And it does happen.

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One example is Microsoft.

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So in 2019, Microsoft in Japan implemented a four-day workweek as a trial.

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And the results were really positive.

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And in fact, productivity did not drop at all.

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but they still decided to bring back the five day week.

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So, you know, it is a long process.

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How would it work in a restaurant or a healthcare job?

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It's really hard and campaigners admit that that's one of the big limitations.

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So a hospital, for example,

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you can't just shut down a hospital for three days,

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but it doesn't mean it's impossible.

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So instead of maybe doing four days a week,

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it's about doing short hours or readjusting how you do shift work.

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So it is possible.

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Because shift work is one of the things that leads to massive burnout, isn't it?

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I mean, actually, I think there are studies that show that the way we work isn't actually very good for us.

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Yeah, so there's a solid body of research that shows that if you work long hours,

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that's really bad for your health.

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It leads to stress, anxiety,

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burnout, but it's more than that.

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So if you look at what the World Health Organization says,

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they say that regularly working long hours raises the risk of stroke,

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of heart disease and even premature death.

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And that's what campaigners for the four day week say.

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They say that the way that we work now,

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five days out of seven is actually bad for our health.

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And that, you know, when we have more time to ourselves,

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we are more physically active,

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we spend more time with our family, with our friends.

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And so when we go back to work,

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we are more focused, we are more energized.

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So it's not only better for our health but it actually makes us better at our jobs they say.

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They say.

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Around the world people work in very different ways

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and in China I was reading about the 996 which is people working from 9am till 9pm six days a week.

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I mean there are cultures that have it a lot worse off.

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Yeah and I think that's a really interesting point

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because all the experts I spoke to said

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that cultural difference is actually the biggest barrier to this because they're so deeply ingrained into who we are,

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how we grew up, where we live.

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So China, the 996 culture,

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that means people, most people work from 9am to 9pm,

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six days a week.

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You've got Japan, for example.

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So Japan has such a strong culture of overwork that they even have a term for death by overwork.

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Death by, people die from overwork.

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I mean, I think around the world it happens,

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but I think Japan just documents it.

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So it's not that it happens just in Japan and that's haroshi.

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People come in early, leave late,

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even if they have nothing to do.

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It's just how it is.

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And there are all sorts of benefits that people are not even taking because it looks bad.

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So for example, men in Japan are allowed one year paternity leave,

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which is very general.

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Most of them don't take it because it looks bad.

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There are some countries that already have fewer working hours,

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shorter working hours like France.

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I mean they brought that in years ago.

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Yeah and interestingly trials for the four-day week are happening or have happened across the world.

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Not just in places like France or Germany or Spain but Botswana,

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the Dominican Republic, Brazil, South Africa.

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So there's definitely an interest in that.

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So if you take Iceland,

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that's a really good example.

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In Iceland now 90% of workers have a right to a shorter work week.

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What about the money though?

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Businesses might say that having people working a few hours makes them less money.

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Yes and I think especially in kind of lower level jobs,

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I was talking about mining earlier,

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evidence shows that employers like their priority is not really workers well-being,

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is sort of getting as much as they can out of their employees.

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So that's a different conversation.

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You could argue that when people work less, they are more productive.

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There is some evidence that says that you can be even more productive.

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But yeah, that's another limitation.

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In a customer-facing role, for example,

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say you work in a supermarket or you're a taxi driver,

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if you work fewer hours,

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you literally have fewer customers and then you actually bring in less money.

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That's a pretty strong argument, isn't it?

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Yeah, I think if you're self-employed, absolutely.

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Oh, if you're self-employed, yeah,

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that would be really, really tricky to implement.

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I mean, it would take quite a lot of self-control, wouldn't it?

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Yeah, it's definitely not a one size fits all.

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It isn't.

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I'm really interested in how this conversation is happening now because,

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gosh, not that long ago was the dreaded COVID pandemic and that changed things for all of us.

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I mean, there was, you know,

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the Zoom meetings and working from home.

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And now we've got this massive cultural shift that is AI

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and people who are joining the workforce for the first time

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or who joined in the last few years they have very different expectations and priorities.

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Absolutely.

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Younger people are questioning more and more the nine to five office-based work model.

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They have completely different priorities and ideas about what work means and what sort of the purpose of work should be.

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So for them, what's top of the agenda is work-life balance.

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You know, across the world,

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one of the first questions

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that Gen Z job seekers ask is what the working hours are and whether there's options to do remote work.

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So that's a really interesting shift.

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And in Japan, you know,

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we were talking about Japan and how the culture of overwork is deeply ingrained.

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Now, younger men are taking paternity leave more,

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so about 30%, which is still quite low.

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But if you think about the fact that it used to be zero a few years ago,

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so there is a change there.

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And what's interesting though to me is that it's not just younger workers.

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There was this global study that came out earlier this year,

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which showed that for the first time ever,

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work-life balance outranks pay when it comes to sort of what the top priority for your job should be.

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And that's not just Gen Z,

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it's millennials, it's boomers, it's Gen X.

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So we are, I think,

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seeing a change across generations when it comes to what people think their priorities should be when it comes to their careers.

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Sophia, thank you so much.

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Thanks for having me.

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That's it from me today.

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But if you like this episode,

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please do subscribe and share and check out some of our other episodes.

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I'm Hannah.

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This is What in the World from the BBC World Service.

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We'll see you next time.

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