The Four-Day Week

Few workplace ideas have traveled as quickly in recent years as the four-day week. The principle sounds almost too good to be true: staff work around 80 percent of their usual hours, keep 100 percent of their pay and, in return, aim to deliver the same amount of work. Supporters claim that it makes employees healthier, happier and more productive. Skeptics suspect that it is a luxury only certain kinds of company can afford. The evidence so far suggests that both sides may have a point.

The most widely cited experiment took place in the United Kingdom in the second half of 2022. Around sixty companies, employing roughly 2,900 people, agreed to reduce working time for six months without cutting salaries. The trial was organized by campaign groups and studied by researchers from universities including Cambridge and Boston College. Participants ranged from software firms and charities to a fish and chip shop.

The results, published in early 2023, were striking. The overwhelming majority of the companies, 56 out of 61, said they would continue with the shorter week at least for the time being, and 18 said the change was permanent. Revenue, among the firms that shared figures, appeared to stay broadly the same. Staff reported less stress and better sleep, the number of sick days fell considerably, and fewer employees left their jobs than over the same period in previous years.

Earlier trials in Iceland, involving around 2,500 public-sector workers between 2015 and 2019, are often mentioned in the same breath, although strictly speaking they tested a shorter week of around 35 or 36 hours rather than a four-day week as such. Researchers there also reported that productivity was largely maintained while wellbeing improved, and many Icelandic workers have since negotiated shorter hours.

Not everyone is persuaded, however. Critics point out that the companies in the UK trial chose to take part, which means they were probably the ones most likely to make it work. Most were small, and many were office-based. Much of the data on wellbeing came from employees' own reports, which are valuable but not entirely objective. It is also possible that the enthusiasm of a high-profile experiment wore off once the cameras had gone.

Then there is the question of which jobs can realistically be compressed. Cutting meetings and email is one thing; cutting a nurse's shift or a bus route is quite another. In hospitals, schools and factories, a four-day week would almost certainly require hiring more staff, and someone would have to pay for them. Some economists argue that, in sectors like these, gains in wellbeing are unlikely to be matched by gains in output.

So is the four-day week the future of work? It would probably be wise to treat the strongest claims with caution. What the evidence does seem to show is that, for a certain kind of organization, the length of the working week is less fixed than many managers assumed. Whether that lesson can be applied to the economy as a whole remains, for now, an open question.