4-Day Working Week, A Panacea?

A FOUR-DAY WORKING WEEK? Is it just a concept or reality? As many as 61 companies in the United Kingdom tried this out between June and December 2022.

- Jayesh Shah

These included a diverse group from finance companies, marketing agencies, education services and fish & chip shops. The study involved 2,900 workers. The trial was based on the 100-80-100TM model which meant 100 per cent pay for working 80 per cent of the time against a commitment to delivering 100 per cent output. In a fascinating result at the end of the six-month period, an overwhelming majority of the companies reported a positive impact of this trial run with the result that 56 companies have decided to continue trying out the four-day week and 18 out of those 56 have decided to adopt it permanently.

Most companies rated the experiment very highly on productivity as well as business performance parameters as depicted in the figure reproduced from the research report carried out by Professor Juliet Schor, Professor Wen Fan and Guolin Gu of Boston College, in collaboration with Professor Orla Kelly of the University College, Dublin.

This was not the first such experiment; in March 2018, Perpetual Guardian, an Estate Planning company in New Zealand embarked on a four-day week journey, starting with an eight-week trial involving 240 employees. Based on the results of the trial which showed no drop in output and increased productivity plus better staff engagement, the company switched to a four-day week permanently on a voluntary, opt-in basis. Andrew Barnes, CEO and Founder of Perpetual Garden had said then, "This is an idea whose time has come".

The data from the more recent UK trial corroborates findings from trials in other countries like the USA, Ireland and Australia which show a direct correlation between working four-day weeks and increase in revenue, productivity and employee satisfaction.