In this article we highlight the benefits of a four day week. Almost every company that took part in the world’s biggest four-day week trial has decided to continue with the reduced working hours model after “incredible” UK pilot results.
Around 2,900 employees took part in the six-month trial conducted by campaign group 4 Day Week Global, which ran from June to December 2022.
92% of participating organisations will continue with the new working pattern.
While the trial’s results showed that the companies’ revenues stayed broadly the same – rising by 1.4 per cent on average over the six-month period – some of the biggest benefits of shorter working hours were improved mental and physical wellbeing, with 39 per cent of employees being less stressed, and 71 per cent having reduced levels of burnout at the end of the trial.
The report revealed that, as part of the trial, the participants “resisted the idea that the four-day week must be ‘one size fits all’”, so each company designed a policy. A range of four-day weeks were developed, from classic ‘Friday off’ models, to ‘staggered’, ‘decentralised’, ‘annualised’ and ‘conditional’ structures tailored to each particular industry, organisational challenges, departmental structures and work culture.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, chief innovation officer at ManpowerGroup and professor of business psychology at Columbia University and UCL, said “The main explanation for this success is that people just work harder when you reward them with freedom and flexibility. In other words, if you are forcing people to spend five days at work for tasks they could achieve in four, then let them have a four-day week.”
Meanwhile, the trial has also demonstrated improved job retention, with a substantial decline (57 per cent) in the likelihood that an employee would quit the company where they worked a four-day week, along with a 65 per cent reduction in the number of sick days taken.
Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD, said: “This pilot has shown the potential organisations have to rewrite the rules on working norms across different roles and sectors, and create better balance of working lives for their people while maintaining business output and outcomes.
“It has shown the willingness to innovate and that the four-day week could be a valuable option to improve work-life balance and retain and attract people.”
However, Charlotte Morris, associate solicitor at ESP Law, said “the results must be taken with a degree of caution”, as “many of the reported benefits of the four-day working week are only going to be truly identifiable in the long term”.
Amid the positive trial results, Gemma Dale, lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, said the working pattern shift certainly has the potential to appeal to more organisations. “However, I would urge organisations not to undertake programmes or trials like this without careful planning, training and support. When schemes are not well implemented or supported they could lead to a range of challenges such as work intensification or extra stressors,” she said.
From a legal perspective, Charlotte Morris warned that there were many practicalities for a business to consider if they wished to follow suit. “From what day people won’t work and what happens with part-time workers who already work a short week and how you calculate holiday pay entitlement, to an abundance of contractual changes that must be made with employee buy in – businesses can’t simply change a persons’ contractual terms unilaterally,” she said.
At the same time, Peter Cheese of the CIPD said “the challenge will be ensuring fairness, making sure people aren’t overworked on the days they are working, and ensuring productivity can be matched or bettered by working fewer hours”.
To make such a shift happen it will take “organisations understanding the people management practices and investments in technology that together will enable employees to work smarter rather than harder”.
A recent CIPD report on the four-day week found that a third (34 per cent) of organisations think this pattern will become a reality for most UK workers within the next 10 years, while currently only 10 per cent of firms have reduced working hours without reducing pay for the whole or a significant part of their workforce.