From pipe dream to reality?
From pipe dream to reality?
A deep dive into the UK’s 4 day week trial results
Last week saw a significant boost for the 4 day working week movement, with the results of the UK’s 4 day week trial adding to the pile of glowing reviews from the US, Ireland, Iceland and beyond.
Setting aside the awed headlines about the success of the world’s largest coordinated 4 day week trial, there’s an incredibly rich and interesting trial report to delve into. This month I’m taking a look at the findings – including some of the more nuanced results that didn’t make the headlines – and sharing some thoughts on where the movement might go next.
About the trial
The UK trial took place between June and December 2022. The product of a collaboration between not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global and the UK’s 4 Day Week Campaign, it was also supported by researchers from the University of Cambridge, Boston College and a UK-based think tank called Autonomy.
The 61 participating companies (with around 2,900 employees between them) were from a wide range of sectors, including financial services providers, retailers, marketing agencies, animation studios, healthcare companies and a fish-and-chip shop. To my knowledge, no law firms or other legal services businesses took part in the trial.
Each company was supported to create meaningful working time reduction in line with the “100:80:100” model: 100% productivity in 80% of the time, in exchange for 100% pay. Importantly, this didn’t mean every organisation simply closed on a Friday for a long weekend. Instead, the objective was to explore how the model might be adapted to accommodate diverse business structures and working cultures.
Participants benefited from training, workshops, coaching and peer support before and during the trial period. To measure the impact and outcomes of the trial, researchers conducted surveys, gathered performance data and interviewed leaders and employees at key milestones.
The results
In the words of the organisers, the trial was “a resounding success”. Some key findings:
56 of the 61 participating companies (92%) are continuing with the 4 day week, the majority on an ongoing trial basis.
18 of the participating companies are implementing the 4 day week on a permanent basis.
Revenue remained largely constant during the trial period, showing an average 1.4% increase between June and December 2022. Against a previous comparable period (mostly year-on-year), the weighted average increase in revenue was 35%.
Staff resignations decreased by 57% and absenteeism decreased by 65%, in each case against a prior comparable period.
Employee wellbeing increased significantly across multiple metrics: 39% of employees were less stressed, and 71% had reduced levels of burnout by the end of the trial. Employees’ mental and physical health improved, with levels of anxiety, fatigue and sleep issues decreasing during the trial.
Work-life balance improved, with 60% of employees finding it easier to combine paid work with care responsibilities, and 62% finding it easier to combine work with social life.
Resounding indeed. To achieve this degree of success, with the data to back it up, is no mean feat. Based on my own observations and conversations over the past few days, I’d say the main benefit of the trial is that it has brought the concept of the 4 day week into the mainstream. As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, we have arrived at an interesting tipping point where working time reduction is shifting from a radical proposal to an achievable future objective.
BUT…
Whatever the headlines may say, 4 day week trials are really just the beginning. It’s all well and good showing that the 4 day week works in a short-term, carefully designed trial. The real question is: how does it play out over time? Will the 92% still be working a 4 day week by the end of this year and beyond? If so, will they still be reaping the benefits?
In an attempt to figure out what comes next for the 4 day week movement, I’ll draw on some of the lesser-cited findings from the trial report, together with my personal experience of working a 4 day week and snippets of the conversations I’ve been having on this topic over the past few months.
So, where to next?
1. Maintaining the gains
I have always seen the 4 day week as both a mindset shift and an operating model. Successful working time reduction requires planning and commitment: you can’t simply skip a day and carry on as you were.
This is exactly why the UK trial was so carefully designed, with tailored support offered to participants. It also makes it difficult to predict what might happen now that the participants are going it alone. It’s tempting to think that the performance and wellbeing gains might be lost once the support is removed and the 4 day week becomes a permanent policy. This is one of the main themes among critics of the trial, so I’m hoping the researchers will revisit the participants in time to see how this develops.
One option is to take a “conditional” approach to the 4 day week, making it subject to ongoing performance monitoring and suspending the arrangement for individuals or departments who fail to meet agreed targets. A small proportion of the UK trial participants implemented this conditional model, but tellingly the report acknowledges that it may lead to “uneven situations where some staff/departments are continuing to work five days” and interview evidence suggested that it created negative feelings among staff. While this level of monitoring would in theory support productivity, my take is that it would quite quickly erode the wellbeing and retention benefits of the 4 day week.
It's also interesting to think about how employee behaviour might impact the long-term success of the 4 day model. In these challenging economic times, some might use their non-working day to take on second jobs to supplement their income. A few of the companies that participated in the trial prohibited this, believing that it would lead to staff “breaching their side of a bargain, i.e. to use the time off to rest, in order to come back to work refreshed.” The risks may outweigh the benefits on this one. Given that the 4 day week is based on trust from both sides (and, as the report shows, is boosted by the goodwill it creates), it makes little sense to try to control how people spend their reclaimed time.
2. Promoting the breadth of working time reduction
In my (purely anecdotal) experience, most people think a 4 day week is simply about giving staff a long weekend. This feeds into a belief that many (lawyers included) share: that the 4 day week could never work for their particular business/role/employer/profession/industry. One of the most interesting outcomes of the UK trial is that it demonstrates how the 4 day model (or other meaningful working time reduction) can be adapted to fit a diverse range of industries, organisational structures and working cultures.
The one caveat that has not been widely reported is the fact that the majority (66%) of companies in the UK trial cohort had 25 or fewer employees. It will be interesting to see the results of 4 day week pilots within much larger companies such as Unilever in Australia or Sainsbury’s in the UK. Until then, the UK trial at least gives a sense of the variety of 4 day week models and how they might apply in more complex organisations. Here are some examples of arrangements implemented during the trial:
Fifth day stoppage: the company shuts down operations for one additional day per week. The priority is to maximise employee collaboration time, rather than to ensure Monday-to-Friday coverage.
Staggered: rather than all employees taking the same day off, staff stagger their non-working days to ensure coverage across the full working week.
Decentralised: different departments implement different arrangements to suit their particular working practices.
Annualised: the average working week across a whole year is 32 hours, with longer working weeks balancing out against shorter working weeks (for example in seasonal businesses).
Among this diverse range of models, only 32% of participating companies followed the typically envisaged pattern of giving everyone Fridays off. I am a huge advocate of exploring options to find a model that works. After a short-lived period of Monday-to-Thursday weeks, I chose Wednesday as my own non-working day and I haven’t looked back. The 4 day week is not a one size fits all solution.
3. Harnessing positivity and imperfection
In one of the most fascinating sections of the UK trial report, the researchers tried to establish the monetary value of the 4 day week for employees:
For those who noted that they preferred four days (96% of the sample), we asked them how much money they would expect at their next job in order to go back to a five-day schedule. 46% (the first two categories) reported they’d take a five-day job with a pay increase of 0-25%. 29% would require a 26-50% increase. 8% said they’d only go back to 5 days if their pay were more than 50% higher. And, interestingly, another 15% said that no amount of money would induce them to accept a five-day schedule.
While these are obvious sentiments for staff members who have only just finished a feel-good pilot project giving them more free time with no loss of pay, these metrics also reflect just how life-changing the 4 day week can be. The next challenge for the 4 day movement lies in making the most of this positivity while also acknowledging that working time reduction is not a silver bullet.
Moving away from the headlines, it’s worth noting that average weekly working time in the UK trial reached 34 hours, rather than the target of 32. Some participating employees worked on their fifth day, and 15% saw their working hours increase during the trial. This is consistent with my own experience of working a 4 day week on an individual basis. There are times when it works and times when it doesn’t, and flexibility (on both sides) is critical. The trick is to realise that perfection is not the objective.
4. Use the trial findings to tackle harder-to-reach sectors
With several successful international trials now in the bag, it’s time for the 4 day week movement to zoom in on sectors that have traditionally been more resistant to working time reduction. Lawyers, I’m looking at you…
We are going through a period of enormous change in the legal profession. Today marks a decade in law for me, and I’m seeing new developments that I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have imagined ten years ago. Whether it’s the much-publicised rollout of an AI chatbot within a major law firm or an in-depth focus on lawyer wellbeing, there’s clearly appetite for genuine innovation and human-centred approaches.
That said, it will be a challenge to convince lawyers that the findings of the various 4 day week trials can be applied to the legal sector. This is not just because the law firm billable hours model makes working time reduction much harder to achieve. It is also because many lawyers believe that the legal profession is different from all other industry sectors. To get a flavour of this, just take a look at the headline and the debate in the comments section of this Law Society Gazette article on the 4 day week trial.
I have many thoughts on how it might be possible to implement a 4 day week in the legal industry, but for now I’ll say that the UK trial should inspire us to change the stories we tell ourselves about what is and is not possible. We now have clear evidence that, with the right preparation and oversight, the 4 day week can become a reality across a wide range of businesses. It’s not perfect, but even an imperfect model generates proven benefits for both employers and employees. Surely this has to be worth a try?
I’ll finish with a quote from the UK trial report that highlights why the 4 day week might be just the thing to shake up the way lawyers operate:
Indeed, over the course of the pilot, managers and staff alike repeatedly praised the value of the four-day week as a catalyst for organisational change, and explained how the promise of the policy had energised staff to think in fresh ways about what they did and how they did it.
You can’t change things without things changing.
The fine print:
All opinions expressed in The 4 Day Lawyer are my own and not those of my current or former employers. My 4 day working week is an individual arrangement and is not associated with the UK’s 4 day working week pilot. This newsletter is an opinion piece and does not constitute legal advice or create any kind of solicitor/client relationship; please consult with a qualified professional if you need advice on a legal issue.