Firms stick to four-day week after trial ends

Faye Johnson-Smith thought it was too good to be true when her boss said she could take every Wednesday off without taking her pay cut.

Her employer took part in a six-month trial testing the costs and benefits of a four-day work week.

Like most of the workers involved, Faye found that she was healthier and happier because she worked shorter hours.

But at the end of the trial, almost all 61 employers involved wanted to keep the new working model.

The scheme, which took place between June and December 2022, involved organizations across the UK, from a brewery to a fish and chip shop, from software developers to recruitment firms.

A report assessing its impact found that it had “extensive benefits” particularly on employee well-being.

The authors argue that this could herald a change in attitudes, so we could all soon come to regard a midweek break or a three-day weekend as normal.

Faye works as a supervisor for Citizen Advice in Gateshead, where around 200 employees took part in the programme.

She says the extra day off gives her time to “recover and recover.”

As a result, she returns to work “ready to run” and, she estimates, achieves as much, if not more, in her four days than she used to in five.

Her colleague Bethany Lawson says she finds her team easier to manage as most of them work a four-day week, which gives her more time to progress, and she also finds that she settles in after a day bit more effort can “reset”.

But for a four-day week with full pay to work across the economy, employers need to see productivity gains.

Workers must create in four days the services and products they created in five days to earn enough money to pay a week’s wages.

This kind of productivity growth has proved an insurmountable challenge for the UK economy. It has fallen behind many other rich nations in terms of value added per worker in recent years, with competing explanations as to why and how this might be fixed.

The report’s authors argue that although the trial was conducted by organizations that volunteered to take part and were therefore more likely to get it up and running, the results make a strong case for a shorter workweek.

“We don’t know exactly what happened to productivity, but we do know that a variety of other metrics, whether it’s revenue, [workforce] Turnover, self-reports on productivity, employee well-being and costs, we had really good results,” says Juliet Schor of Boston College, one of the academic institutions behind the trial along with the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

While most participating companies reported being satisfied with productivity and performance results, only 23 provided financial data on revenue, showing that revenue had remained broadly flat over the six months of the trial.

But of the 61 participating companies, 56 said they would continue with the four-day work week, at least for now, while 18 said the policy was a permanent change.

Tylor Grange, an environmental consultancy based in Stoke-on-Trent with six offices across England, is one of those fully embracing the new pattern.

Simon Ursell, its managing director, admits the first month of the process was “a little white-knuckled”.

He didn’t want to simply compress the work that was done in five into four days because that would put too much pressure on the staff, he says.

Instead, the plan was to eliminate unnecessary meetings, travel, and administration. But in the end, it was the employees themselves who found the efficiency needed.

“Basically, if you give people this incredible incentive of a full day of their time a week, they’re going to work really hard to make it work,” he says.

Now, he says, his employees get 2% more work done in four days than they used to in five. The team is happier. Absenteeism has shrunk by two-thirds and applications to work at Tylor Grange are pouring in.

These results mirror the report’s overall findings: that employees were much less inclined to call in sick and more inclined to stay with their employer, thereby reducing hiring costs and making employee training more rewarding.

However, the results are not so clear-cut for every organization.

Citizens Advice in Gateshead, where Faye works, is not yet ready to commit to a permanent four-day week.

Chief executive Alison Dunn says the charity has seen many benefits in the shorter workweek, including less burnout among its employees, who are under a lot of pressure in the current livelihood crisis.

“It’s absolutely worked for most companies,” she says.

“But there are some areas of the business where the jury is still out on how effective it will be.”

Achieving efficiencies in the contact center, which was already heavily monitored and had difficult goals to achieve, proved more difficult. There, Citizens Advice had to bear the cost of hiring additional staff to accommodate the four-day-week pattern.

Ms Dunn hopes the extra investment will ultimately be offset by a reduction in hiring, retention and sickness costs, but it’s still “a work in progress,” she says, with a review due in April.