4-Day Work Week: Is it applicable to every firm?

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By Riley Garvin & Minh Anh Ta

“The 20th-century concept of a five-day working week is no longer the best fit for 21st-century business” – said Ed Siegel in his interview with The Guardian, who is the chief executive of Charity Bank – one of the first UK banks that implemented the 4-Day Work Week(Kollewe, 2022).

Traced back to the origin of the 4-Day work week, we found that this idea has been widely discussed since the 1960s and 1970s. According to Hedges (1971), 600 US firms across different sectors (mostly located on the Eastern seaboard and in the Central State) have offered different forms of a 4-Day Work Week for its workers, but as was the result for dozens of firms, the scheme has been tried and discontinued for various reasons. The 30-ish hour work week at the late 20th – early 21st century was considered to be infeasible due to the significant reduction in working hours achieved in previous decades (Roser, 2018; Veal, 2022), together with public preference toward the idea of “block of leisure” – also known as the annual long-day holiday scheme (Hedges, 1971) . The 4-Day Work Week scheme was also told to have an adverse effect on the health and wealth of the workers due to the denser amount of stresses during a shorter work week; and in the long run, on productivity and on costs because it is said that productivity reduction is more possible to be associated with the final hour of a work day and day of a work week, than the total amount of work days or hours (Hedges, 1971).

Despite failing to gain major traction in the late 20th century (Hedges, 1971), the advantages of a 4-Day Work Week are still undeniable (Hedges, 1971)  and remain to be recognised until today (Kollewe, 2022; Veal, 2022; Mao, 2022). These include:

  • Improvement in workplace experience of employee: It’s undeniable that employees are the first group to experience the benefit, this includes potential gain in productivity thanks to a longer leisure period per week (Hedges, 1971; Mao, 2022), a better work-life balance especially for parents (Francis, 2019), a further support for gender equality in workplace (Francis, 2019, Mao, 2022) and a more accessible workplace for disabled people (Laker, 2022). 
  • Savings on firm management: Businesses also state that 4-Day Work Week can help their firm run more cost-effectively (Veal, 2022), such as a report from Henley Business School (2019) which shows benefits from the scheme with UK businesses including improving businesses’ quality of recruitment, increasing overall employee satisfaction, lowering employee sickness levels and increasing productivity can be converted into combined savings as high as £92 billion a year, 2% of total annual turnover. 
  • Contribution to global environment protection: A study from Knight et al. (2013) found that working time is significantly associated with environmental pressures, considering the following three categories: the ecological footprint, the carbon footprint, and carbon dioxide emissions. According to a report of Platform London (2021), moving to a four-day week by 2025 will result in a shrink in the UK’s emissions by 127m tonnes – a more than 20% decrease, equivalent to eliminating all private cars from the roads in the UK, the case is also applied with the US and many other countries. 

Considering the promising benefits, and the disruptions and innovations toward flexible working arrangements arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, attention to the scheme has been heightened more than ever (Veal, 2022; Laker, 2022).

In the second decade of the 21st century, the suggestion of a 4-Day Work Week has been brought back, in which multiple countries and companies around the world have entered the trial of this scheme, the UK is no exception. During the six months preceding the publication of this post, the trials have been ongoing across the UK at over seventy companies, with over 3,300 workers participating. These companies have been reducing their work weeks by a day without compromising pay – 80% of the hours with 100% pay. The trials have been organised by 4-Day Week Global, a non-profit business community, who have been running similar trials in other English-speaking countries (4dayweek.com, n.d.). 

There has been reported success in the UK trials, with 86% of the participating firms planning to make the change permanent – 95% of firms saying that productivity had either been maintained or improved under the four-day week structure (BBC News, 2022).

However, a four-day week is not desired uniquely by those who want to work fewer hours; a 2019 YouGov poll in the US with 36,000 recipients found that over two thirds of people would prefer a four-day week with 10-hour shifts, over a five-day week with 8-hour shifts (Kakabadse, et al., 2022). Workers in Belgium, public or private, are now entitled to this option – and can choose between four or five days in a 40-hour week, a law that came into effect on November 21st this year (Hurst, 2022). It seems flexibility in working life is what workers are after, a sentiment shared by the Belgian PM Alexander de Croo, who said “the goal is to give people and companies more freedom to arrange their work time” in support of the new legislation (Hurst, 2022).

4-Day Work Week is definitely introducing a new concept of working flexibility, but to what extent will the scheme be applied? Here we consider the case of consultancy, which is a client-based industry where “the decision is not with the sector” – said Robert White, consultant at RPA.

The benefit of 4-Day Work Week within the industry is no different from the whole market at all, demonstrated by the results of the trial of the scheme at Advantage Consultores, an international consulting firm specializing in recruitment based in Barcelona, Madrid, and Nuremberg during COVID-19 pandemic. After the trial, its CEO emphasised the increase in productivity thanks to increasing motivation of the team in a climate of trust, self-determination, and entrepreneurial spirit, and importantly, “The client does not notice the day of absence, since the teams work very collaboratively and with agile tools such as Drive, Scrum, Slash, etc.” (Varela, 2021)

However, it must be considered that this trial was happening during the pandemic, when the working flexibility was much higher due to the restriction of face-to-face interactions. What about the case when COVID-19 has gone, in-person meetings, which are much more efficient compared to a Zoom meeting, are back to the office?

When we asked the panellists at the Autumn 2022 ECO Employability Event for their opinion on the growing prospect of 4-Day Work Week, most of them are in favour of the idea thanks to its benefits towards the employee, however, they also share a lot of concerns against this idea.

According to Robert, introduction of the 4-day work week is a great thing, considering an increase in productivity amongst the firms that enter the trials. However, he concerns that there exist “some industries where the four-day working week will never be applicable”, therefore it is hard to imagine the future of the ubiquity of the 4-Day work week for the general public. Considering the case of consultancy sector, he said that: “Consultancy will probably be the last industry to take up the initiative, because we are working at the behest of clients … we are at the back of the queue, because we’ve got to wait and see how the people we work with also respond – the decision is not with consultancy firms.”

Shimon Gadhavi, Strategy Consultant at Deloitte, also shares her agreement, reinforcing this point, stating that a 4-Day Work Week will definitely be beneficial for the employee – “but if my clients do not have a four day working week, they will expect us to have meetings on a Friday – we are being paid by the client and have to work by the client’s rules, so it would not always work in consulting.”

The panellists suggested that a flexible working schedule would be more appropriate due to the seasonal nature of the work. Enrique Martin, Graduate Analyst at Ebiquity says “I think that it would be more beneficial to have flexible working because there are periods of time where we do not have to work that much so it would be a good time to give the employees some rest, but there are other times where we have to push and work a bit more.” Giovanna Ariel Ventre, Analyst at Oxera also stated that the number of working days is not the matter. “There are very busy times as well as chilled times, and this hinges on the projects you are working on. However, the work time is really flexible, and the needs of each team member are always valued.”

Lydia Luff, Technology Consultant at KPMG shares other concerns, “My personal opinion is that any increase in flexibility is beneficial for employees, but I do wonder how a four-day working week would be implemented – what if the company gave Fridays off but some employees would prefer a different day? Could you end up working with different people on different time schedules, making it difficult to collaborate?” However, Lydia went on to talk about how flexibility has been introduced at her firm: “Over summer here at KPMG, we were allowed to flex our time to have Friday afternoons off, this was promoting wellbeing and really did offer flexibility, and people responded really to it.”

In summary, a four-day working week would not be easy to implement within the consultancy industry due to being at the mercy of when clients work. But as more and more clients shift towards a shorter week, consulting will have to deal with fewer clients operating on a five-day format. Furthermore, greater flexibility within consultancy is possible due to the sinusoidal nature of the work and is being implemented at some firms.

We cannot deny that 4-Day Work Week receives a lot of favour from the public thanks to its overwhelming advantages on the employee’s work-life balance, the costs on the firm and the contribution to environmental protection. The rise of the 4-Day Week is the result of a rising concern of people’s well being, especially in response to the working arrangements during COVID-19 pandemic – the period when we were just staring at the computer screen for some interactions. But implementing this scheme in every sector of the economy is not easy. The case of the consultancy industry has demonstrated some reasons why, including the nature of the sector to be dependent on other sectors. However, the case study doesn’t reject the benefit of a more flexible workplace, which is beneficial for the well-being of the workers and can potentially increase productivity.

The 4-Day Work Week is opening a new era of working flexibility, even though its implementation for the whole economy is still a long way off. But the spill-over of the emergence of the scheme has increased our awareness of various existing social matters, especially our colleagues’ well being and work-life balance.

References

  1.  4dayweek.com, n.d. UK Pilot Programme – 4 day work week. [Online] Available at: https://www.4dayweek.com/ukpilot [Accessed 5 12 2022].
  2. BBC News, 2022. Firms in four-day week trial will make it permanent. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62966302%5BAccessed 5 12 2022].
  3. Francis, L., 2019. All Parents Should Only Work Four Days A Week. [Online] Available at: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/parents-only-four-days-week-182108904.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAE5vQPz_YP3qctvzjD8SWUUo4UaK_LPckjGORaC00HPXSokCV4eB-hL0am3SllYgy9FPdbhQIOOftItvp58ZUOus40JaJBzPqet [Accessed 4 12 2022].
  4. Hedges, J. N., 1971. A look at the 4-day workweek. Monthly Labor Review, 94(10), pp. 33-37.
  5.  Henley Business School, 2019. Four better or four worse? A white paper from the Henley Business School, Reading: University of Reading.
  6. Hurst, L., 2022. Workers in Belgium can now switch to a four-day week – but they won’t be working fewer hours. [Online] Available at: https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/11/21/workers-in-belgium-can-now-switch-to-a-four-day-week-but-they-wont-be-working-fewer-hours [Accessed 5 12 2022].
  7. Kakabadse, A., Kakabadse, N. & Alawadi, A., 2022. Is the four-day week really working?. [Online]  Available at: https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1803081/four-day-week-really-working [Accessed 5 12 2022].
  8. Knight, K. W., Rosa, E. A. & Schor, J. B., 2013. Could working less reduce pressures on the environment? A cross-national panel analysis of OECD countries, 1970–2007. Global Environmental Change, 23(4), pp. 691-700.
  9. Kollewe, J., 2022. Thousands of UK workers begin world’s biggest trial of four-day week. [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/06/thousands-workers-worlds-biggest-trial-four-day-week [Accessed 4 12 2022].
  10. Laker, B., 2022. What Does the Four-Day Workweek Mean for the Future of Work?. [Online]  Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-does-the-four-day-workweek-mean-for-the-future-of-work/ [Accessed 4 12 2022].
  11. Mao, B., 2022. This is what the 4-day workweek means for equal rights, productivity and climate change. [Online] Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/02/what-the-four-day-workweek-means-for-the-future-of-employment/ [Accessed 8 12 2022].
  12. Platform London, 2021. Stop the Clock: The environmental benefits of a shorter working week , London: Platform London.
  13. Roser, M., 2018. This is how working hours have changed over time. [Online] Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/working-hours [Accessed 4 12 2022].
  14. Varela, A. F., 2021. Consultancy joins the 4-day week: the founder of Advantage Consultores assures that its implementation has brought “only advantages”.. [Online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/four-day-week-consultancy-employee-weekend-work-salary-efficiency-vacation-2021-4?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 5 12 2022].
  15. Veal, A., 2022. The 4-day Work Week: the new leisure society?. Leisure Studies.

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