As Caribbean nations continue to reimagine workplace norms in the wake of global public health and demographic shifts, a top Caribbean management scholar is pushing for widespread adoption of flexible work arrangements in Barbados, arguing that a departure from the rigid 40-hour, 9-to-5 workweek could dramatically cut worker stress and improve population-level health outcomes.
Flexible work policies, often referred to as flexi-time, grant employees autonomy to adjust their start and end times, and in many cases their work location, while still requiring completion of contracted hours and core job responsibilities — a marked break from the one-size-fits-all fixed schedule that has defined global work structures for more than a century.
Professor Dwayne Devonish, a specialist in management and organizational behavior at the University of the West Indies, outlined his case during a recent virtual public forum focused on advancing workplace wellness. He emphasized that the hard-learned lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic must drive permanent changes to how local businesses prioritize worker health going forward. The global public health crisis, he noted, laid bare the inherent fragility of human life and cemented the centrality of wellness across every sector of Barbados’ economy.
Beyond pandemic lessons, Devonish pointed to two other major shifts reshaping the need for updated workplace policies over the past six years: Barbados’ persistent public health burden from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and rapidly changing expectations across shifting workforce demographics. Unlike previous generations of workers, he explained, younger employees entering the workforce today — particularly members of Generation Z — consistently rank workplace health and wellness support above base salary when evaluating job opportunities, a priority shift that businesses can no longer afford to ignore.
A common misconception holding back small businesses, which form the backbone of Barbados’ economy, is the belief that comprehensive workplace wellness programs are prohibitively expensive to roll out. Devonish pushed back against this narrative, stressing that even small, incremental adjustments to workplace policies can deliver outsized benefits for employee wellbeing and productivity. “It doesn’t have to be an expensive undertaking,” he noted. “We’re not asking you to implement all types of wellness initiatives all at once. It can be incremental and according to your capacity as a small business.”
Among the most accessible, low-cost changes Devonish highlighted are flexible scheduling and part-time remote work options, which allow employees to balance competing work and personal care responsibilities more effectively. For small teams with limited resources, these adjustments count as low-hanging fruit that require little to no additional investment, he added.
Faye Prescod, Acting Permanent Secretary of Barbados’ Ministry of Labour, echoed Devonish’s calls, confirming that rethinking traditional work structures remains a key topic of national policy discussion. She recalled that Prime Minister Mia Mottley has previously floated proposals to restructure the standard 40-hour workweek, including the popular compressed schedule model that allows employees to work four 10-hour days instead of the traditional five-day split, while still fulfilling the full 40-hour requirement.
Devonish further noted that multiple European countries have already run large-scale pilots of four-day workweek policies, with most studies reporting overwhelmingly positive outcomes including improved retention, lower stress, and no loss of productivity. He also questioned whether the 40-hour workweek, a model first popularized by Henry Ford in early 20th century United States, remains the most effective structure for 21st century work. “Who’s to say that a 40-hour work week is the best work week?” he asked. “That was something inspired by Henry Ford in the US…who’s to say that we can’t do something different?”
Despite proven benefits of flexible work during the pandemic, Prescod acknowledged that skepticism persists among many local employers, who continue to question whether remote workers maintain productivity outside of a traditional office setting. As a public sector leader who works a hybrid schedule of two remote days and three in-office days per week, Prescod personally supports flexible arrangements, but recognizes the slow pace of cultural change among private sector employers.
Barbados’ public sector has already taken formal steps to embed flexible work into policy: the government introduced a national Flexible Work Arrangement Policy in 2020, which offers thousands of public servants access to a range of options including flexi-time, compressed workweeks, staggered shifts, and full or part-time telecommuting. Under the policy, public employees on flexi-time can select their preferred start and end times within pre-agreed bounds, but are required to work full mandatory hours and be present for core working hours set by their individual ministry.