Flexible working time models are the models of the future. Unfortunately, the skilled trades occupy last place among all the sectors surveyed in Germany, at 1.2%. According to the Statista analysis, the rigid working time concepts predominantly offered by the skilled trades do not match the wishes of young skilled workers. But how can employers in the skilled trades change this?
When it comes to the question: How do I find new employees, new skilled workers for my craft business, one should first deal with two topics:
Here we introduce you to the 4-day week as a possible starting point for making the skilled trades more attractive.
The 4-day week is proving to be particularly popular and practicable in the construction trade. 80% of employees in the skilled trades are happy to work three-day weekends and are willing to work more hours during the first four days of the week in return.
One thing is clear: you can't plan and work without a well-coordinated, satisfied team. That's why you absolutely have to involve your team in the decision. What do the individual team members want and how do they think it can be implemented? You can schedule a longer meeting for this purpose.
The advantage is definitely that as a manager you can show that you care about attractive workplaces and value the opinion of your team.
One important reason for implementing a 4-day week in your company is really to attract employees. You can differentiate yourself from competitors and arouse great interest among applicants.
When starting a new job, changing careers or changing employers, good pay is not the only decisive factor for many employees. Social components are also enormously important: such as a strong future, flexible work hours, good colleague cohesion, family friendliness, etc.. The skilled trades offer all of this with good management, and the 4-day week is thus also an absolute motivation and productivity booster.
On Fridays, people usually only work until 1:00 p.m., after that it's closing time. But what if the current construction site is 50km away? The travel costs and in the end also the costs for the vehicle to be driven (gasoline, depreciation, kilometers) fall away, if e.g. Friday is free and during the week rather times one to two hours daily more is worked there.
Regular preventive care appointments or visits to the authorities are just as much a part of everyday life as the actual wage work. With a 4-day week, employees can relax and schedule their appointments on the day off, and there is no need to cover the costs of the absence.
By redistributing the hours to, say, 4 longer days instead of 5, when most customers have trouble arranging them anyway because they have to work themselves, is a clear competitive advantage. So also a free after-holiday service could replace the emergency service.
As a managing director, you can, for example, participate in the acquisition of new machines, trade fairs, digitalization projects or remote planning. There would finally be time for this, which is usually lost in the busy business, but is essential for the progress of your company.
In the end, each company must find out for itself whether a 4-day week works for the company, the employees and from the planning point of view. In principle, the implementation is possible in almost every company.
The ratio of productive to unproductive work is much better with this model, for example travel and working time. Employee loyalty and applicant recruitment are improved enormously, and the time that employees normally need for visits to the authorities or doctor's appointments is reduced to virtually zero.
Productivity and employee motivation increase.
One saves enormous travel costs as a company in the form of paid travel time and the reduced vehicle costs on Friday.
The 4-day week seems to be a win-win situation for employees, operations and ultimately customers.