The Four-Day Workweek: Does It Work?

According to a study conducted by the Auckland University of Technology, stress levels dropped from 45% to 38%, and work-life balance increased from 54% to 78% when participants experienced a four-day workweek.

The COVID-19 health crisis forced companies to reevaluate their work practices to consider employee health care. An example of this is the normalization of remote work. Before the onset of the pandemic, it was unthinkable that remote work would dominate entire companies as the default mode. According to a study by Owl Labs, 16% of companies worldwide worked entirely remotely during 2021.

Changes of this nature open the path to question other work culture aspects, such as schedules and productivity. The four-day workweek began testing in various countries as a pilot program in 2018, long before the pandemic. The Fiduciary Firm Perpetual Guardian New Zealand was one of the first companies to implement this new work schedule.

According to an internal study conducted by the company and monitored by the Auckland University of Technology, the four-day workweek increased staff engagement and empowerment. Stress levels dropped from 45% to 38%, and the work-life balance score increased from 54% to 78%, as Andrew Barnes, founder, and chief executive of the company, reported to The Guardian.

“The biggest concern from an employer’s point of view is to ensure that the full-time introduction of this policy does not lead to complacency and risk declining employee productivity,” added Tammy Barker, Perpetual Guardian’s branch manager for the English newspaper.  She explained that to avoid this, work managers must ensure that each team member has a defined plan for their work times, capabilities, and job positions so that productivity is maintained. This should always be the norm.

The four-day workweek experiment is also being conducted in other countries, such as Iceland, Spain, and Japan. Between 2015 and 2019, four-day workweek tests were conducted in Iceland and analyzed by the Autonomy, and research organization Association for Sustainability and Democracy (Alda) in Iceland. Since the successful test results, 86% of the workforce in the country has switched to the four-day schedule.

An option, not a total solution

Despite the positive results in most cases in which this schedule has been tested, it is not possible to say that it works for all companies, nor for all work areas, nor is it a universal and infallible remedy for overwork and work stress. A schedule arrangement would have to go hand in hand with an efficient distribution of work and eliminating unpaid overtime as part of the work culture.

Unfortunately, hundreds to thousands of companies cannot survive if this practice is exercised. The global normalization of a balance between the number of personnel, the company’s objectives, and the corresponding workload per individual and team must occur before thinking about reducing one day per week. The reduction could possibly be unsustainable for many work teams.

Do you think the four-day week can improve a company’s productivity? What disadvantages do you think it may have compared to the benefits? Do you believe other more essential factors within the work culture must be adjusted before implementing this measure? Let us know in the comments.

Translation by Daniel Wetta

Sofía García-Bullé

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0