Nilever has announced that it will hold a four-day work week trial on full pay for New Zealand employees.

The 81 staff members in New Zealand will retain their full pay, but their time will be reduced by 20 per cent.

Unilever New Zealand managing director Nick Bangs said the corona virus crisis was accelerating four days a week.

“This is an exciting moment for our team, and a validation of the catalytic role played by Kovid-19 in shaking the standard working methods,” Mr Bangs said.

“This is a great time in our life cycle to lead Unilever NS’s strong growth trajectory as a business to something new and desirable.”

Unilever NSE said it would work with the University of Technology (UTS) Business School in Sydney, Australia to measure the positive effects of the trial.

The company that distributes Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Lipton has announced that it will train some of its employees in a project management style called Agile.

Agile breaks work in short steps with regular redesign and adjustment of plans. According to Unilever NS, Agile is a system that “eliminates work that does not add value and unnecessary bureaucracy.”

Mr Bangs added that the company was inspired by Andrew Barnes and his team at Perpetual Guardian.

The New Zealand Financial Services Company has introduced a four-day week in 2018 for 240 members. According to a study released last year, productivity increased by 20 percent.

“Our goal is to measure the output output, not the time,” Mr. Bangs said.

“We believe the old ways of working are outdated and out of date.

We hope the trial will lead to Unilever being the first global company to adopt practices that offer clear benefits to staff and business.

At the time, she said: “I hear a lot of people suggesting we need a four-day workweek. Ultimately it is between employers and employees. But as I said, we learned a lot about Kovid, the flexibility of people working from home, and the productivity that can be driven out of it.

“If you are an employer and you are in a position to do so, I encourage people to think about it. Think about whether this is something that works in your workplace, as it will help tourism across the country. ”

Unilever, which employs more than 150,000 people worldwide, said it would look into the possibility of introducing a four-day job on a broader scale in the future.

The trial will run from December 2020 to December 2021.