The concept has been around for a while, and now a campaign group are running a UK trial with 60 companies. Here we explore the benefits, and highlight some things to watch out for.
It feels like the four-day week is a concept whose time has come. In the wake of the pandemic, companies of all shapes and sizes have been exploring how changes to working arrangements can support productivity, wellbeing and inclusion, and help navigate the Great Resignation. And now, 90 or so years after the establishment of the two-day weekend, there’s a growing feeling that working less may be the solution.
Into this space has come the four-day week campaign, part of a global movement championing the benefits of this arrangement. June 2022 sees the launch of a sixth-month UK pilot trialling the move to a four-day, 32-hour week, with no loss of pay; 60 companies, including over 3000 workers, will be taking part. And we, like many organisations, will be watching with interest.
Our interest in the four-day week is longstanding; we believe that, implemented carefully, it can be hugely beneficial on many levels. We have the experience to back up this view; we have recently been working with leaders in the tech, and retail sectors to trial it within their organisations. And we have celebrated companies who have successfully implemented the four-day week through our annual Power List.
But we are also well aware that, alongside the many positives, there are some potential issues and pitfalls that employers need be aware of if this kind of arrangement is to be a success. So here’s a summary of how a four-day week could benefit your organisation – and the challenges you’ll need to tackle to make it work.
There’s widespread agreement on the benefits of working less, both for employers and their employees, and feedback from companies which have trialled the four-day week is overwhelmingly positive. It has been seen to lower stress levels, sickness and absence and improve work-life balance, wellbeing and motivation. It can also boost talent attraction and retention and, by taking some of the stigma away from working less, could support female progression and so help close the gender pay gap.
Additionally, a November 2021 Henley Business School white paper noted that businesses that offer a 4- day week have reduced costs while at least maintaining the quality of the work produced. And there are strong arguments for the environmental benefits, with one assessment suggesting that moving to a four-day week by 2025 could reduce the UK’s emissions by 127 million tonnes.
However, it’s important to remember that these benefits will disappear if the four-day week is implemented badly. So it’s critical that leaders and managers makes sure that an employee’s workload is achievable within the four days available.
This is particularly relevant because there is evidence that the pandemic has led to an increase in the number of people working excessive hours. As IES Director Tony Wilson highlighted on Twitter, overemployment (that is, people who want to work fewer hours, and are prepared to take a pay cut to achieve it) is at 3.5 million, a record high. And the rise in work creep during the pandemic was so marked that it triggered calls for a legal right to disconnect.
So before trying to implement an arrangement in which people work less, leaders need to put in place a culture in which boundaries are respected within existing jobs, and robust dialogue between managers and their teams around quantity and quality of work is encouraged. And crucially, people’s jobs need to be designed to fit the hours available to carry them out.
Shifting from a five-day week to a four-day one, across an organisation, is not straightforward, and there are some operational challenges that need clarifying. For example:
The four-day week campaign are clear with their definition: they refer to a 100-80-100 arrangement, in which employees receive 100% pay for working 80% hours while delivering 100% performance.
This is not the same as compressed hours (for example, working four 10-hour days instead of five eight-hour ones, for the same pay) which is a completely different arrangement, and one which brings very different challenges. So employers need to understand, and be open about, what they are offering under the four-day umbrella.
If full-timers move from a five-day week to a four-day one, what happens to those who already work less than five days (and are paid accordingly)?
The four-day week campaign suggest, and we agree, that a four-day part-timer should either continue to work their four days with an uplift in pay, or reduce their hours by a similar proportion to their full-time colleagues without a decrease in salary.
And while that seems reasonable, it becomes more complicated for employers who are working three or two days a week, and is likely to have a bigger impact on deliverability than it does for full-time colleagues. None of this is surmountable, but it has to be carefully considered, robustly implemented, and tightly managed.
Depending on how client-facing your organisation is, you may prefer to stagger people’s days, so you have a full week covered, rather than giving everyone in your team the same day off. If you opt for the former, you’ll need to take care to make it fair (how do you decide who gets which day off?) and have a plan for communication that takes into account people’s varying days.
These challenges shouldn’t be a barrier to implementing a four-day week – but they do need to be considered before you start, and planned and executed well. It’s also important to remember that what works for another business might not work for you; when it comes to the four-day week, there really is no one-size-fits-all.
In the interests of fairness, a four-day week is not something that can be allocated to some employees and not others. If you want to avoid a two-tier workforce, split into four-day week haves and have-nots, it has to be implemented organisation-wide.
However, that does raise some big questions about how it can be managed for frontline employees, particularly those in shift-based or service-focused roles or those who produce. It can be done – for example, nurses already work 36-hour shift patterns across seven-day rosters – but there may be a need to plug reduced hours across a schedule with extra resource, which is likely to come at a cost.
And there is also a watchout regarding employees who are paid by the hour, many of whom are on relatively low wages and so seeking to work as many hours as possible. Whilst being paid the same for working fewer hours is of course a positive outcome, they are more likely than most to seek to fill the time with extra work, which would negate any wellbeing benefits.
This latter point is part of a much wider conversation about pay, and not one we can solve here – but it’s worth bearing in mind, nonetheless.
Let’s be clear; this kind of structural shift isn’t cost-free, and will require an investment of both time and money to get right. That shouldn’t be enough to put you off; given the positive impact it is likely to bring to your organisation, it would be money well spent. And we can say this with confidence, given that our own recent research has proved that there is a positive ROI for implementing flexible working arrangements.
But it’s important to be realistic about the additional costs you will incur up front, and to allocate the resources that a change of this magnitude deserves.
Overall, then, the four-day week is an intriguing prospect, which could be hugely beneficial to employers and employees alike. But – and it’s a big but – it’s not a quick fix, and doing it badly would be worse than not doing it at all. We’ll be watching the progress of the trial with great interest – and will be tracking the longer-term impact as it becomes more embedded into UK workplace norms.
Published May 2022
