Dubai restaurant implements 4-day work week for employees

Dubai restaurant implements 4-day work week for employees

One of Dubai's most popular power lunch spots is moving permanently to a four-day workweek. LPM Restaurant & Bar, formerly known as La Petite Maison, says servers, cooks and other staff members will take on longer shifts on two days and have three days off per week at both of its branches in the United Arab Emirates. Overall, staff members will work slightly fewer hours per week and keep the same salary. The French restaurant is making the change in a bid to attract and retain the best employees in a notoriously high-pressure industry. "It was really necessary to act," says Alexandra Audon, director of operations in the Middle East at LPM. "In an era when everyone is talking about a work-life balance, I can assure you that the hospitality industry was never known to tick the boxes." The move comes as a companies and governments around the world experiment with four-day workweeks, accelerated by COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. Some studies of pilot programs last year concluded that the reduced or compressed hours were good for both businesses and employees. In the UK, 88 per cent of companies that tried out the shortened week last year said the new schedule worked