4 working days a week: Seems to be working, study says

experience on Four working days Weekly it halved, with most companies saying they didn’t notice any loss productivity. In some cases, it even increased. The programme, which started in June and ends at the end of November, has 73 companies participating in United kingdom. 3,300 employees work 32 hours a week, the same salary they were paid for 40 hours.

Thirty-five of the 41 companies that have responded so far to a survey from 4 Day Week Global, the organization running the project, said it was “likely” or “very likely” that they would consider staying on a four-day work week even after the trial ends. 39 of them stated that productivity remained the same or improved – of these, 6 said it had increased significantly.

The survey also wanted to know how moving to a lower day was in employees’ workday. Twelve companies said the change was “very smooth”, 20 said it was “smooth” and another 8 thought it was more or less. Only one of them had problems with this move.

In a note, 4 Day Week’s global CEO Joe O’Connor said the hurdles to transition are understandable, particularly in companies that “have relatively fixed or inflexible practices or culture.” The organization said it is helping these companies create a more flexible business model, and that it will use the new results from the trial to expand the number of companies testing the 4-day model.

In addition to the 4 Day Week Global, the Autonomy Research Center, the 4 Day Week UK campaign and researchers from Cambridge, Oxford and Boston College, as far as is known, are involved in the study – the latter running five days a week.