The Four-Day Week Trial

Most of the companies that took part in one of the world's largest trials of a four-day working week have decided to keep the shorter week, according to the results of the experiment, which took place in the UK in the second half of 2022.

Around sixty companies and nearly three thousand employees took part in the six-month trial, which was organized by the campaign group 4 Day Week Global together with a think tank and university researchers in Britain and the United States. The organizations ranged from small marketing agencies and online shops to a fish and chip restaurant, a bank and several charities.

The idea behind the trial was simple. Workers would receive one hundred percent of their pay for working eighty percent of their usual hours, as long as they continued to deliver one hundred percent of their work. Each company was allowed to decide how to do this. Some gave all their staff Fridays off, while others gave different employees different days off so that the business could stay open every day.

When the results were published, the researchers reported that more than fifty of the companies had chosen to continue with the four-day week, and that a number of them had made the change permanent. Revenue, they said, had stayed broadly the same during the trial, and in many companies it had actually risen slightly compared with previous years.

Employees reported lower levels of stress and tiredness, and said they were sleeping better and finding it easier to balance work with family responsibilities. Many described using their extra day for exercise, hobbies, housework or simply resting, which meant that the weekend felt like a real break. According to the report, the number of sick days fell considerably, and fewer staff left their jobs than in the same period the year before.

Managers were generally positive too, although several admitted that the first weeks had been difficult. One director told reporters that her team had been forced to rethink how they worked. Meetings, she explained, had been cut from an hour to thirty minutes, and staff had agreed to set aside periods of the day when nobody would interrupt them. Another manager said that some customers had been worried at first but had soon stopped noticing any difference.

Not everyone was convinced. A small number of companies decided to return to a five-day week, saying that the change had not suited their business. Some critics have pointed out that the companies taking part had volunteered, which suggests that they may have been especially open to the idea from the start. Others have warned that a four-day week would be much harder to introduce in hospitals, schools and factories, where work cannot always be done more quickly.

Similar experiments have been carried out in several other countries. In Iceland, for example, trials involving public sector workers between 2015 and 2019 reduced weekly hours without reducing pay, and were widely described as a success, although they did not always mean a full extra day off.

Experts expect the debate to continue. Most agree that the four-day week is unlikely to become standard everywhere in the near future, but several said that the trials had changed the conversation. As one researcher put it, the question is no longer whether a shorter week can work, but where, and for whom.