Impact of a Four Day Work Week

The pandemic brought forth a revolution in how employees embrace working from office. A good work-life balance is increasingly becoming a priority for them, they no longer wish to work 40 hours week and are giving more importance to enhancing productivity and completing the deliverables. The biggest upside to remote working was increased flexibility- working from home gave them the opportunity to work and go about their usual daily life and responsibilities. Coming back to offices meant going back to prior ways of working, something that employees were moving past. A change needed to be introduced to align with these changing attitudes to work. A new concept which is gaining a lot of popularity is the four-day work week. Under this, employees would work for four days instead of five but for the same pay. This doesn’t imply longer working hours for employees, instead it’s fewer hours but for the same pay. There have been numerous international studies to test this in the UK, New Zealand, Belgium, Japan and more and the outcome has been positive.

The UK study was the largest trial, with more than 60 companies participating in the four-day work week from June to December 2022. The 100-80-100 model was used- workers got 100% of their usual pay by working 80% of their previous hours but had to maintain 100% productivity. The trial was very successful with more than 90% of the participating companies continuing with the four-day work week. The experiment reached its goal of improving work-life balance of employees, they reported 71% less burnout (World Economic Forum 2023).

Microsoft Japan conducted a similar study and found that worker productivity increased by 40% (Paul 2019). The program ran for a month wherein a four-day work week was implemented with the same pay. The results were phenomenal with happier employees who took fewer days off, an increase in productivity and reductions in electricity and paper usage due to fewer working days. Here we see another aspect coming in, the environmental impact. Studies show a 21% reduction in miles travelled by cars and a that a 10% reduction in working hours reduces carbon footprint by 8.6% (Schor 2023). Utilising lesser electricity will also be more energy and cost efficient for companies.

While fewer working hours has shown positive results worldwide, it does have some drawbacks. It can lead to internal scheduling conflicts, in order to make arrangements for the extra day off. Employees may be expected to complete the same volume of tasks but within fewer hours, leading to stress and burnout. More staff can be required, increasing company costs and lastly it would not work for every sector (Example- Healthcare, agriculture). With more and more companies adopting a four-day work week, it is evident that employers are realising its positive impact on productivity and efficiency. This is the future and while it can be disruptive initially, companies can mitigate perceived downsides through extensive planning and research. Embracing this new norm will surely improve the well-being of employees along with promoting sustainability and improving business operations.

Arshiya Khattar, The writer is a student of Economics at KREA University and pursuing her internship with VeKommunicate.