Switching to a four-day work week can be good for the bottom line, according to the results of a new trial in the United Kingdom.
For six months between last November and April, nearly 1,000 employees across 17 companies and other organizations were given an additional day off each week while retaining the same pay and workload.
All the 17 entities have kept the shorter work week after the trial period, the 4 Day Week Foundation, a UK campaign group that organized the trial, said Thursday.
It wasn’t only workers who reaped the benefits of a shorter week. Some organizations recorded an increase in revenue and fewer sick days compared with the same year-ago period.
BrandPipe, a software company based in London, saw its revenue jump almost 130%, according to a report compiled by the 4 Day Week Foundation and Boston College in the United States.
“The trial’s been an overwhelming success for BrandPipe,” Geoff Slaughter, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told the report’s authors, adding that a four-day week is “a great thing for businesses to try.”
BrandPipe is one of four organizations that provided data about their revenue. Of those, three saw a rise in revenue and one a fall during the trial. The decrease, however, was reported against a different comparison period – specifically, the six months immediately preceding the trial.
Four organizations also registered fewer sick and personal days taken by employees during the trial. The remaining two for which the information was available recorded a higher number of such days.
The data on revenue and absences is limited, as the report’s authors acknowledged, writing: “Given this, the findings are purely descriptive and only provide a limited insight to the impact of the trial for individual organizations.”
In addition to companies, the 17 organizations included eight charities, non-profits, non-governmental and voluntary entities. Most opted for a four-day week, while five chose a nine-day fortnight.
The outcome of the trial comes hot on the heels of success elsewhere.
During similar experiments in the United States, UK and Germany, workers reported being happier and healthier.
One year after a large UK trial in 2022, involving 61 organizations, a large majority were still allowing their employees to work a shorter week. Likewise, trials in the US and Canada in 2022 and 2023 resulted in almost all companies continuing with the policy.
But these studies are not without their critics.
Michael Sanders, a professor of public policy at King’s College London, pointed out that such trials are based on self-selection, meaning that the companies agreeing to take part might be those where a four-day week would “be taken up enthusiastically.”
Trying a shorter week may work well for these “motivated” employers and employees but it “doesn’t tell us much about what would happen if someone else tried it,” Sanders told CNN.
Joe Ryle, campaign director of the 4 Day Week Foundation, responded that, in the last few years, such trials around the world had involved hundreds of companies from a wide range of sectors, which had signed up “with varying degrees of enthusiasm and commitment.”
But in future trials the foundation would like to “add an element of randomized control where possible,” he added.
However future experiments may be done, one participant in the latest installment is optimistic about a shorter work week.
“I expect that most organizations will be doing this in the next 10 years or so,” Alan Brunt, CEO of Bron Afon Community Housing in Wales, told the 4 Day Week Foundation.
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