Will a 5-Day Working Week Promote Meaningful Work-Life Balance in the NSW Building and Construction Industry?
Everyone has the right to a healthy work-life balance. Ensuring that people working in the NSW building and construction industry have a healthy work-life balance is in everyone’s interests.
This report explores whether proposals to introduce a 5-day week will improve the work-life balance of those working in the NSW building and construction industry. The aim is to give every person working in the industry a voice in the 5-day week debate.
Data was collected using a variety of methods and from a wide range of people and organisations across the NSW building and construction industry.
Highlight 1: Self-perceived work-life balance
The hours people worked and its relationship to WLB depended on a wide range of factors such as:
Individual attitudes towards work;
Personal characteristics and circumstances;
Career stage;
External pressures;
People’s seniority and how long they have worked in the industry;
The nature of people’s work;
Where they work;
How they get paid;
The sector of the industry;
The nature of the project a person works on.
Highlight 2: Support for a hard 5-day week
Support for a hard 5-day is conditional on a wide range of variables
Who is going to bear the costs and what the costs could be;
The 5-day model employed;
Personal circumstances and characteristics;
Existing work cultures and WLB provisions;
Not compromising the project they worked on;
Not letting down other team members;
Not damaging the competitiveness of their employers;
Not reducing the high salaries that attract people;
Clients being willing to take or at least share some risk.
Highlight 3: Preferences for 5-day week scenarios by pay
“There were significant concerns among many waged earners about the loss of overtime payments for not being able to work weekends, which were being exacerbated by increasing costs of living pressures (especially for young people with large mortgages and those not able to work longer days during the week due to family and other weekday commitments or the physically and cognitively demanding nature of their work).”