Can the Four-Day Workweek Work?
June Zaccone
Can the Four-Day Workweek Work? Yes, according to Biggest trial of four-day work week finds workers are happier and feel just as productive. From July but still relevant, the conclusion is that “Compressing five days of work into four can create stress, but the benefits outweigh the downsides.”
Moving to a four-day work week without losing pay leaves employees happier, healthier and higher-performing, according to the largest study of such an intervention so far, encompassing six countries1. The research showed that a six-month trial of working four days a week reduced burnout, increased job satisfaction and improved mental and physical health.
To see whether shorter weeks might be the antidote for poor morale, researchers launched a study of 2,896 individuals at 141 companies in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Before making the shift to reduced hours, each company that opted into the overhaul was given roughly eight weeks to restructure its workflow to maintain productivity at 80% of previous workforce hours, purging time-wasting activities such as unnecessary meetings. Two weeks before the trial started, each employee answered a series of questions to evaluate their well-being, including, “Does your work frustrate you?” and “How would you rate your mental health?” After six months on the new schedule, they revisited the same questions.
Overall, workers felt more satisfied with their job performance and reported better mental health after six months of a shortened work week than before it.
Would this ever be applicable to all jobs? No. To all careers? No, but the number is likely to be higher than expected. Will management ever “believe” this? Don’t make us laugh. But still, this has been floating around since the Personnel Department became the Department of Human Resources. Some of us are old enough to remember the former. It was a better time. But regarding management:
A common criticism of the four-day work week is that employees can’t produce the same output in four days as in five. The study didn’t analyse company-wide productivity, but it offers an explanation for how workers can be more efficient over fewer hours. “When people are more well rested, they make fewer mistakes and work more intensely,” says Pedro Gomes, an economist at Birkbeck University of London. But Gomes would like to see more analysis of the impacts on productivity.
Fan notes that more than 90% of companies decided to keep the four-day work week after the trial, indicating that they weren’t worried about a drop in profits.
The authors also looked at whether the positive impacts of shorter work weeks would wane once the system lost its novelty. They collected data after workers had spent 12 months after the start of the trial and found that well-being stayed high.
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