Viewpoint: Changing patterns

The four-day working week has become an increasingly hot topic of late, however it has been on people’s minds for much longer. During the 1930s, amid the Great Depression, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century improved and efficient working methods would mean a 15-hour working week for most workers. More recently technological developments in fields like artificial intelligence have fuelled talk of industry needing fewer human working hours in the future.

However, in modern Britain, many of us are working ever longer hours, and not only in our workplace. There is an expectation to be available constantly online and so, for many, our working days do not finish when we usher our last patient out of the door but continue long into the evening.