The Four-Day Workweek: Is It Right for Your Company?

Employee burnout reached record highs in 2022—and so did turnover. 

To retain top talent, improve employee well-being, and attract new hires in a competitive hiring landscape, employers everywhere took a closer look at their workplace policies to identify areas where they could relax the rules a bit and provide employees with some much-needed relief. 

For some, that meant loosening PTO policies; for others, it meant providing more remote work options. 

Now, long-awaited data from a large-scale four-day workweek pilot are in, and the results are overwhelmingly positive—meaning it might finally be time for employers to embrace a shorter workweek (without a reduction in pay) to achieve desired outcomes. 

A Win-Win for Employees and Employers 

The trial, conducted by the non-profit organization, 4 Day Week Global, and led by Boston College, the University of Cambridge, and British-based research institution Autonomy, included 60-plus companies from marketing agencies to hospitality organizations to financial firms in the U.S. and the U.K. 

Among nearly 3,000 employees participating in the study, 71% reported reduced burnout levels and other improvements to their physical health and well-being. Employees in the pilot were also able to spend more time with their families, pursue hobbies, and take better care of themselves and loved ones—all key freedoms of a healthy worker. 

Participating employers reported boosted productivity and output, a slight increase in revenue, and a 57% drop in employee turnover during the trial—a crucial metric for employers in the current hiring landscape. 

After the six months were up, 92% of participating employers chose to keep the four-day workweek—permanently. 

Ultimately, the results confirm a hypothesis that has been growing in popularity for quite some time: a truncated workweek is better for employees and employers.   

One Size Does Not Fit All 

Despite the overwhelmingly positive results, the experiment didn’t work for every participating business. Some organizations abandoned the experiment, while others reported new challenges arising from shortened workweeks. 

Though those failures only represent a small portion of the trial’s participants, it means the four-day week isn’t an automatic solution for every business. Much of the disparity can be attributed to the methods that participating organizations deployed to execute a shortened week. In the study, companies were not tied to one reduction strategy. The only requirement: maintain 100% pay and give employees a meaningful reduction in work time. 

“Resisting the idea that the four-day week must be ‘one-size-fits-all,’ each company designed a policy tailored to its particular industry, organizational challenges, departmental structures, and work culture,” wrote the authors of the study. “A range of four-day weeks were therefore developed, from classic ‘Friday off’ models, to ‘staggered’, ‘decentralized’, ‘annualized’, and ‘conditional’ structures.” 

Here is a breakdown of those models: 

• Friday Off: the company shuts down operations for one additional day per week (not necessarily Friday)
• Staggered: employees alternate days off to maintain a Monday-Friday schedule 
• Decentralized: different departments work on different schedules depending on their needs
• Annualized: requires workers’ annual average to be 32 hours per week but doesn’t specify a particular day off
• Conditional: allows for a 32-hour workweek as long as performance targets are met

In order for employers to figure out if an abbreviated work week is right for their organization, it’s critical to explore, test, and tweak various models before writing it off altogether. 

And, it’s in their best interest to do so—the upside is too great. The majority of participants said four-day workweeks increased employee well-being without sacrificing productivity. Plus, according to a recent Monster survey, one in three employees say they would quit their jobs for a four-day workweek job, meaning it’s a tactic employers can use to win the war on talent. 

The Hard Truth: Industry Realities

For some organizations, however, the four-hour workweek just isn’t possible. This reality is particularly true for customer-facing businesses where creating enough slack in the schedule for a four-day week means extra hiring costs to ensure there is no lapse in support. Employers in industries like healthcare and finance also face greater constraints when it comes to shortening the week. 

To figure out if a shortened work week is right for your organization, tune in tomorrow for another episode of America Back to Work: Expert Interview Series. 

Our very own chief strategy officer (and former U.S. Secret Service agent), Arnette Heintze, sits down with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Shorter: Work Better, Smarter and Less–Here’s How, a book detailing the rationale and implementation processes behind the four-day workweek. 

America Back to Work features weekly blogs and interviews with industry professionals, and together, we’re dreaming up a future where companies are thriving, employees enjoy their jobs, and America is back to work. Click here to subscribe.