Is the 4-Day Week Worth Adopting In Your Company?

You might have heard about the “4-Day Week” - but is it something you should be getting on board with?

The 4-Day Week was trialed in 2022 with over 70 companies. The trial lasted six months, and companies who previously had a conventional 5-day working week shifted to four days, without their employees losing pay.

At the halfway stage, there were some interesting results – productivity was either the same or better at most of the companies, and 86% of them planned to keep the four-day week after the trial ended.

Two years on from the trial, however, it's becoming clear that the 4-Day Week works for some, but not for everyone.

From the employee perspective, the benefits include:

• Getting an additional day off

• Saving money on childcare costs or gaining more time to care for elderly parents

From the employer perspective, the benefits include:

• Happier employees, who have a better work-life balance
• Becoming an attractive company to work for

However, it's not a clear, cut-and-dried solution.  Some companies, such as Morrisons and ASDA, found the 4-Day Week to have a more negative impact on their staff's wellbeing as shift-length increased and work-day patterns were disrupted.

"The experiment did not work for Mark Roderick’s engineering and industrial supplies company Allcap. “As opposed to 10 normal workdays, we found that employees would have nine extreme ones – once they got to their scheduled day off they were exhausted," he said last year..." - BBC News

The whole experiment is very interesting and relevant to the ever-changing work landscape – we’re getting asked more and more by clients about how to deal with flexible working requests.

And the answer is two-fold:

1. Consider what the law requires you to do 

2. Consider what’s best for you, your business and your employees

That’s where traditional, rule-based HR blends with fostering a company culture that works, and if you could use a conversation about how to make that happen, reach out to us.