Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | May 29, 2023 | Worcester Business Journal 25 e benefits of a four-day workweek V I E W P O I N T E D I T O R I A L B urnout. Job dissatisfaction. Work inequities. e Great Resignation. Our U.S. work environment desperately needs a makeover. Although there is no magic pill, one potential solution is a four-day work- week. It was for us at the Boys & Girls Club of Worcester. In March 2020, at the beginning of COVID, my committed team members provided emergency child- care for hospital personnel, first responders, and essential workers. We pivoted to create learning hubs for our youth when schools went remote for the 2020-2021 year. Even when schools reopened the following year, our staff and kids were still required to follow strin- gent safety protocols, including mask-wearing. e result was many of us felt physically tired, emotionally drained, and oen disengaged. I'm sure many can relate, but the difference was while other industries allowed employees to work at home, my team never had that opportunity. In January 2022, during my annual State of the Club discussion with all employees, they spoke of struggles with work-life balance, admitting working at the club felt overwhelming. ey appreciated the incentives and bonuses, but it wasn't enough. I mentioned the four-day workweek, and studies showed it had increased employ- ees' job satisfaction and productivity in the United King- dom, Denmark, and Sweden. My team perked up when we began to envision a plan. We aimed for a fall 2022 kickoff. With some legal advice, we were off and running. Our director of operations worked with the team on a workable schedule: We could not allow the change to hurt our kids or prevent them from receiving services or attention they needed. ere were a few hiccups: Approximately 65% of our full-time employees opted in, and communication was not perfect. When several staff became ill the same week, we had to pause the initiative to met the necessary staff-to-youth ratios. Both management and team agree the pilot was a success. One important outcome was a major decrease in unexpected call outs. Our team members generally kept to scheduled work days: Even if they had a challenging week, they could remind themselves of their upcoming day off. Staff say having an extra day to decompress, run errands, care for urgent matters, or spend time with fam- ily has been invaluable. Staff who participated reported they felt focused, present when working with our kids, and got more accomplished. e decreased work week better promoted an equitable workplace for women, who are still the primary caretakers of children at home. Our pilot program ended in May, as we are not yet ready (or have the staffing) to continue the four-day workweek during summer, when we provide 15 hours of youth programming a day. We will resume the initiative in the fall. e biggest lesson I learned is the importance of listening to your team members and trying something that, although risky, has the potential for great benefit. Liz Hamilton is the CEO and executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Worcester. BY LIZ HAMILTON Special to WBJ A T H O U SA N D WO R D S B Y R A M Ó N L . S A N D O V A L A rocky road toward a green economy Liz Hamilton F or the last couple decades, Massachusetts government and economic leaders have made several promises to reduce the state's use of fossil fuels, and there are many miles to go before those promises are kept. Now the most recent proclamation, the Massachusetts Clean Energy & Climate Plan 2050, lays out a roadmap to essentially eliminate carbon from the electric grid and have in place a reliable infrastructure to achieve net- zero greenhouse gas emissions. With no magic bullet on the horizon, achieving that objective will require a multi-pronged approach, with a blend of carrots and sticks to massively accelerate the rate of change. While some progress has been made in the last decade, the required rate of change to meet even the plan's interim objectives for 2025 and 2030 will be stunning. e electrical grid not only needs significant reinvestment to handle the mix of renewable projects coming online, but it will need to double, or perhaps even triple, capacity to meet the anticipated demand by 2050. at translates to a massive increase in transmission capacity and infrastructure, something we've become used to fighting about, particularly on the local level. Back when WBJ hosted its first Energy Summit in 2007, we had the leader of the Cape Wind project as our keynote speaker. Cape Wind had been announced as the first U.S. utility-scale coastal wind energy project in 2001. It took 15 years, but the project was finally killed in 2017 aer an endless number of legal actions, mostly funded by a powerful group of Cape Coders who did not want to see wind turbines from the deck of their summer homes. Now some 22 years later, a different wind project – Vineyard Wind – has made it past all the regulatory hurdles and is under construction, with the promise of generating enough energy to power some 400,000 homes, optimistically by the end of the year. If that's any example of how long a renewable energy project has to wait for approval in the future, we're cooked. Our state leaders know this and are working to thread the needle with plans to support an accelerated investment and approval process for energy projects without pulling the rug out from under its citizens or municipalities. e devil remains in the details, but we are optimistic the right incentives, along with a more streamlined approval process, will get Massachusetts renewable investments back and ultimately operating at a record pace. It behooves business owners to pay attention to those changes and any new incentives, be they federal or state, to give onsite renewable projects an even more attractive return on investment. e carrots will be there, but you've got to do a little digging to reap the rewards. While the road to a carbon-free economy is fraught with obstacles, some exciting new technologies could help us get there. Two of those companies working on the cutting edge of clean energy are Electric Hydrogen (read about them on page 14) and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, both operating out of Devens. If their technologies can come online at scale over the next couple decades, it could be transformative. Transformation is what the Massachusetts economy will need over the next several years in order to fulfill its promise of a clean energy future. With many obstacles in the way, we are still holding out hope. The above Editorial is the opinion of the WBJ Editorial Board. The Viewpoint column, the A Thousand Words cartoon, and the Word from the Web commentary represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of WBJ or its staff. WBJ welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Send them to bkane@wbjournal.com. W W

• Cover