COMP NEWS – A new trial study on the four-day workweek confirms what most other trial studies have discovered – that employees under the schedule consistently accomplish more work in less time.

Findings from one of the largest experiments with a four-day workweek offers new ballast for people hoping to adopt the same schedule: The longer people worked in new, more efficient ways, the shorter their workweeks became.

The results come from a series of four-day-workweek trials conducted in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Ireland over the past 18 months. Dozens of companies ranging from design agencies to manufacturers and nonprofits tested the four-day concept, an approach that is gaining traction as employers and employees rethink the traditional ways of work. Workers were given a paid day off a week but the same workload to see whether they could get as much done working more effectively. 

After six months, workers said they had less burnout, improved health and more job satisfaction, and had cut their average work time by about four hours to 34 hours a week. Those who continued the schedule a full 12 months reduced working times even further, to about 33 hours a week, researchers say. Meanwhile, they continued to report better mental and physical health and work-life balance.

Similar trials in other companies have yielded similar results. While many companies are hesitant to switch to the four-day workweek, those trailblazers that embrace the change are yielding the benefits of a more productive workforce.

Companies in the U.S. and Canada recently concluded a smaller pilot of a four-day week led by the same researchers, and similar trials are in the works in Australia, Brazil and elsewhere. In a U.K. trial involving 61 British companies last year, the majority of the participants said they would stick with the four-day week after logging sharp drops in worker turnover and absenteeism while largely maintaining productivity.

The vast majority of jobs are likely to stick to the conventional five-day schedule for the foreseeable future. Most companies trying shorter weeks are small employers, not large ones. And some workers in four-day experiments report struggling to get everything done in that time.

Jenise Uehara, chief executive and co-owner of Search Engine Journal, a digital marketing publication that participated in one of the U.S. trials, said she proposed moving to a four-day workweek last year as the company wrestled with growing pains. Some of its three dozen remote employees had become overwhelmed with the increase in work, and turnover was rising. 

As part of the experiment, the company declared a “meeting bankruptcy,” wiping all meetings from the calendar for a month, then thinking hard about which were really necessary. Some meetings became shared documents instead, where participants would update each other with progress reports and other notes as they happened. 

Within six months, the company’s turnover had dropped, productivity held up, and clients didn’t notice the business had moved to a four-day week, Uehara said. The company plans to continue operating on the four-day week, with staff taking Fridays off. 

To read more about the trial study on the four-day workweek, click here.

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