The town of Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) is innovating by launching the four-day week experiment for its staff. Agents now work continuously from Monday to Thursday.
The town hall of Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban is taking the plunge and trying the four-day week. They will now work continuously from Monday to Thursday.
But this new schedule does not mean less work, it involves a change in weekly rhythm which appeals to municipal agents.
“It’s a very good thing, we will have more intense weeks but we will also have more leisure time”, underlines Laurence, a town hall employee; “We spend almost half our life at work and, in 4 days, we spend a third less and we devote a little more time to our personal life”.
The town hall remains open longer
This opinion is shared by Elisabeth, another employee of the community: “It requires organization in terms of our tasks, our amount of work and it is practice that will help us to organize ourselves better. And then we had a lot of people who thought it was good to have access to the town hall outside of working hours,” she shares.
For users, this reorganization results in an extension of the opening hours of the town hall, which is now open from 8 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. without interruption from Monday to Thursday.
Requests for extension to other services
René Villard, the mayor of this town of 5,000 inhabitants, is satisfied with the initial feedback.
“I worked with the unions and department heads to see if it was possible to implement it,” he explains.
“We will take stock at the end of the year. Today, only administrative services are concerned, but I already have requests from technical services, so we will see about finding suitable solutions so that everyone can be entitled to them,” he added.
The town hall of Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban has already conducted such experiments to improve the organization of work. Last year, the community tested summer hours. A system that has been continued since then.
