Four days of work, three days at the weekend – for the same wages as with a five-day week: What may sound like wishful thinking for many employees has become reality for a few thousand employees in Great Britain – initially for half a year. After the end of the pilot project, the majority of the companies involved draw an extremely positive conclusion: More than four out of five want to stick with the concept.
After the end of the test phase, 56 of 61 employers said they wanted to keep the four-day week – 18 even confirmed that the concept had already been introduced permanently. These results come from an analysis published on Tuesday by researchers from Boston and Cambridge, who accompanied the project scientifically and conducted in-depth interviews with those involved.
“Before the project began, many questioned whether we would see an increase in productivity that would offset the reduction in working hours – but that’s exactly what we found,” says University of Cambridge researcher Brendan Burchell. According to the analysis, the sales of the companies involved increased by 1.4 percent on average during the test phase in the second half of last year.
Two-thirds fewer sick days, only half as many layoffs
Sick days fell by around two thirds (65 percent) during the test period and the number of employees who left the company during this time fell by more than half (57 percent). Around four out of ten employees stated that they felt less stressed than before the project began.
Workers were wasting less time and were actively looking for technologies that would increase their productivity.
Brendan Burchell, University of Cambridge
The British project involved companies from the financial sector, IT and construction, catering and healthcare, as well as a fish and chip shop. The companies involved employ a total of around 2,900 people. Some companies introduced a three-day weekend across the board, while others staggered employees’ days off throughout the week or tied it to goals.
Other countries are also experimenting with the four-day week, including Ireland, Iceland, Belgium and Australia. Some German companies are also testing similar variants.
More time for everyday tasks
The British-German economist Andrew Lee, who teaches at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University, sees the model as a continuation of a trend: “What still seems like a revolution now could be totally normal in the near future, just like it was almost a year ago In the 19th century, the five-day week quickly became the norm,” Lee said in an interview with the German Press Agency.
Researcher Burchell reported that many employees themselves looked for ways to increase their productivity. “Long meetings with too many people have been shortened or eliminated altogether. Employees were killing less time, but were actively looking for technologies that would increase their productivity,” he is quoted as saying in the evaluation.
Many companies reported that during the corona pandemic, high workloads and stress had increasingly emerged as areas of conflict and that new ways and solutions had been sought.
As can be seen from the surveys, most employees used the additional day off primarily to carry out everyday tasks such as shopping or household chores. This, in turn, enabled many to use the actual weekend more for relaxation, to spend more time with family or friends, and to devote more time to hobbies or engagements.
However, some employees also expressed doubts about the model: some were concerned that their workload could increase too much during the working day. Economist Lee also raises the question of how the four-day week should work in essential industries – such as nursing or healthcare – where it is simply not possible to increase productivity. The risk is that the attractiveness of these professions will decrease if the concept does not work there. “That would be bad because we already have shortages in these professions,” Lee said. (dpa)
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