The Dutch Are Quietly Shifting Towards a Four-Day Work Week

The Netherlands serves as a case study for the advantages and trade-offs of reduced hours in the workplace.

- Sarah O'Connor

To the proponents of a four-day week, there is almost no problem in modern life which the idea can't solve — or at least ameliorate. Burnout? Tick. Gender inequality? Tick.

Unemployment? Tick. Carbon emissions? Tick.

Conversely, opponents see only problems: reduced economic output; damaged business competitiveness; strained public services; a weakened work ethic.

But rather than argue over these predictions, or nitpick over the results of trials in individual businesses, why not look to the country that has gone a long way down this road without the rest of the world really noticing?

The Netherlands has the highest rate of part-time working in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Average weekly working hours for people aged 20 to 64 in their main job are just 32.1, the shortest in the European Union, according to Eurostat.

It has also become increasingly common for full-time workers to compress their hours into four days rather than spread them over five, says Mr Bert Colijn, an economist at Dutch bank ING.

"The four-day work week has become very, very common," he told me. "I do work five days, and sometimes I get scrutinised for working five days!"