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Rethinking the 5-day work week?; `It`s Not Hopeless`: See How This Tiny Island was Brought Back to Life; A Rare Fossil on Display in Chicago. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired May 13, 2024 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hello, and welcome to the show. I`m Coy Wire. This is CNN 10, where I tell you the what, letting you decide what to think.
Hope you had an awesome weekend. Happy belated Mother`s Day to all the mamas out there.
So today`s Monday, first day of the school week, first day of the work week for most folks, but does it have to be that way? Whether you`re tightening
screws on an assembly line or crunching numbers at a computer, people have been working five days a week for a long time.
Henry Ford standardized the practice about 100 years ago when he required employees at his Ford Motor Company factories to work 40-hour weeks or
eight hours a day for five days. A century later, though, some companies are reconsidering whether that schedule still makes sense. CNN`s Clare
DUFFY: has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARAH ROBB O`HAGAN, CEO, EXOS: We went from desktops to laptops to mobiles. We`re working, working, working, and there was no discussion around, wait,
this has gotten out of control.
CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER (voice-over): Preventing employee burnout has become such an important priority that nearly one-third of large U.S.
companies are exploring shorter work weeks. One of them is Exos, a performance wellness company. CEO Sarah Robb O`Hagan, saw the burnout and
wanted to fix it.
ROBB O`HAGAN: It was a huge issue going on across all of our clients. And so we were like, well, hey, we could be a company that can help to figure
out how to solve this.
DUFFY: Her answer was something she calls You Do You Fridays.
(On camera): So tell us about You Do You Fridays. What does that mean?
ROBB O`HAGAN: So it means you do you. So you may choose to say this Friday, I`m exhausted. I need to go spend time out hiking. Other people may say
Friday`s my day to just do quiet work and not be disturbed.
But what we put in place was you cannot email, text, write to any of your colleagues. You can`t set meetings. It is You Do You Friday. And what goes
hand in hand with You Do You Friday is how we constructed the other days of the week.
We structured this because we know actually from training high performance athletes that you put a lot of load on them and then you follow it with
really intentional recovery to get more out of how the athlete`s performing. So think about us in the workplace. Like if we`re working 80-
hour weeks, 70-hour weeks, which some people are, it`s like how on earth is your body ever recovering? Of course you`re going to get burned out. So the
more we can help to introduce this concept that recovery isn`t weak, it`s actually part of preparing you for higher performance. I think the better
for all of us.
DUFFY (voice-over): Robb O`Hagan partnered with the University of Pennsylvania`s Wharton School to study how a four-day work week impacted
employee performance.
ROBB O`HAGAN: We were trying to figure out, can we prove that with a four- day work week that employees will perform at the same level or better and feel better? And the answer was yes.
DUFFY: During the six months of the study, Exos also reported that employee burnout dropped from 70% to 30%.
(On camera): It sounds like this works in part because Exos` culture is already structured in this way where you have employees who are probably
already having a lot of freedom over their hours. Do you think this is something that can work anywhere?
ROBB O`HAGAN: Yeah, it`s funny. We get asked that question a lot. And I actually do like I think it requires leadership really being innovative in
how they think about what work really is.
Every industry can really think about, is there a way to stagger shifts? Are there ways, even if you can`t do the four-day work week, to really
think about what we call a recovery first culture?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: Pop quiz, hot shots.
Which one of these contains the world`s largest collection of coral reefs?
Great Barrier Reef, Amazon Reef, Apo Reef, A Christmas Reef?
OK, that last one`s a bad dad joke. But if you said the Great Barrier Reef, you are corally correct. The remarkable site located on the northeast coast
of Australia contains 2,500 individual reefs, 400 species of coral and more than 900 islands.
Next, we`re taking a trip to one of those islands, Lady Elliot Island, located at the southernmost tip of the Great Barrier Reef.
The island is lush with greenery again, regrowing after decades of topsoil mining. But now there`s a new threat to this delicate ecosystem, mass coral
bleaching. CNN`s Ivan Watson has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An hour off the coast of Brisbane, Australia, lies a tiny paradise island only
accessible by light aircraft.
PETER GASH, LADY ELLIOT ISLAND ECO RESORT: We`re looking at the beautiful Lady Elliot Island, the first island off the southern edge of the Great
Barrier Reef.
WATSON: But it didn`t always look like this. It has been through an incredible transformation. Led by one man. Landing here is tricky.
GASH: We have to deal with a short runway with crosswinds and it`s quite bumpy.
WATSON (on camera): Touchdown.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Have a good day.
WATSON (voice-over): My pilot is Peter Gash. He basically owns the island, leasing it from the Australian government and running an eco-resort here
with his family.
GASH: My wife and I came here 40 years ago, went underwater and absolutely fell in love with the place. We made it our life`s work. Because humans
have not bothered the animals for a long time since it`s been made a protected zone, because humans don`t interfere, we just look but don`t
touch. We don`t spear, we don`t fish. The wildlife is completely comfortable with us.
WATSON: Meanwhile, above the surface, the island teems with seabirds.
GASH: At its peak, it`s in excess of 200,000 birds.
WATSON (on camera): On this tiny island.
GASH: On this tiny little island.
WATSON: What are these tanks, for example?
GASH: That`s our water storage.
WATSON: OK.
GASH: So we desalinate the water and we store it there. We keep about between 10 and 12 days of water.
WATSON: How much of the energy being used by the resort comes from solar power?
GASH: 100% of it.
WATSON (voice-over): In the 19th century, settlers mined the island for bird guano, leaving the place mostly barren, hard coral. You can almost
count the trees that were here in 1970.
GASH: Absolutely. There was almost nothing. Everything you see here, we planted. I couldn`t walk here 15 or 20 years ago because it was so rough.
Here now, we`ve got natural soil. Magnificent.
WATSON (on camera): Is this from your compost?
GASH: No, it`s from the trees and the bird. That`s bird poop, dead birds and trees and mulch. This is naturally forming. This is the island
regrowing again. The island grows about three millimeters a year.
Human input caused the problem. Nature, with a bit of help from humans, a bit of human input, is now recovering. It`s rewarding. And what it tells me
is if we can recover this small place, then we can recover this big place, this whole planet that we live on. It`s not hopeless. Every single one of
us can make a difference.
WATSON (voice-over): Peter`s message of hope is inspiring, but it`s tempered by something we see underwater. Amid the reef sharks and sea
turtles, there`s coral bleached white. Enough to worry this island`s greatest enthusiast.
GASH: What we do see is more and more bleaching, more and more stress on the corals. The hot water, the water warming, the environment changing and
bringing up the water. To me, that`s a big risk.
WATSON (voice-over): The damaged coral here, part of the mass bleaching event caused by the marine heat wave along the Great Barrier Reef, a
phenomenon that could threaten the entire ecosystem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: If you`re a dinosaur fan, you might want to go ahead and come with me to the Field Museum in Chicago. It has a fossil on display that some
scientists call the most important fossil of all time because it establishes a link between birds and dinosaurs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. JIMGMAI O`CONNOR, FIELD MUSEUM OF CHICAGO: Archaeopteryx is the one fossil that tells us that the birds outside our window are living
dinosaurs. And I think that is so cool. And it`s also the oldest fossil bird that`s ever been found, the only Jurassic bird.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: Research suggests that birds were the only group of dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction roughly 66 million years ago. Only 12
archaeopteryx specimens have been found and most are on display in Europe.
In honor of Mother`s Day yesterday, our 10 out of 10 is a shout out to some new moms and babies. The Nashville Zoo is welcoming the birth of four Red
River hog piglets. It`s the first litter of that species ever born there. Red River hogs aren`t endangered, but the population is decreasing in the
wild. They are native to the rainforests of Africa.
The Nashville Zoo is also celebrating the birth of a male red ruffed lemur named Helios. The species is native to Madagascar and is considered
critically endangered due to habitat loss.
All right, you animals. Shout out time. Mrs. Kelly`s class and all the marvelous maroons at Perry High School in Perry, Oklahoma. Thank you for
being you.
And this shout out goes to Mrs. Kilcup`s class at Liberty Middle School in Spanaway, Washington. The lightning. Lighten up our day. Rise up. Make it a
great Monday. I`ll see you right back here tomorrow. I`m Coy. And we are CNN 10.
END
