ArticlePDF Available

Abstract

Work four days a week, but get paid for five? It sounds too good to be true, but this debate is front and center within numerous European economies, not only because of a culture shift toward accommodating flexible working but also because some evidence suggests it's good for business. Many organizations in Europe are cutting workweeks, though not wages, from 36 hours (five days) to 28 hours (four days) to reduce burnout and make workers happier, more productive, and more committed to their employers.
/
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Will the 4-Day Workweek Take
Hold in Europe?
by Ben Laker and Thomas Roulet
AUGUST 05, 2019
ALMA HASER/GETTY IMAGES
Work four days a week, but get paid for five? It sounds too good to be true, but this debate is front
and center within numerous European economies, not only because of a culture shift toward
accommodating flexible working but also because some evidence suggests it’s good for business.
Many organizations in Europe are cutting workweeks, though not wages, from 36 hours (five
days) to 28 hours (four days) to reduce burnout and make workers happier, more productive, and
more committed to their employers.
/
The four-day workweek is not a new idea: France implemented a reduction of working hours (les
35 heures) almost 20 years ago to create better work-life balance for the nation. The measure is
still heavily debated, with proponents saying it created jobs and preserves work-life balance and
critics saying it reduces the competitiveness of French firms.
Leading today’s trend is the Netherlands, where the average weekly working time (taking into
account both full-time and part-time workers) is about 29 hours — the lowest of any
industrialized nation, according to the OECD. Dutch laws passed in 2000 to protect and promote
work-life balance entitle all workers to fully paid vacation days and maternity and paternity
leave.
Many UK organizations are also playing with the idea. Last month, one of us (Ben) worked with
colleagues at Henley Business School to survey 505 business leaders and more than 2,000
employees in the UK to better understand the impact of the four-day week on Britain’s modern
workforce. The results show a mixed bag of benefits and costs.
Half of the UK business leaders we surveyed reported that they’ve enabled a four-day workweek
for some or all of their full-time employees, noting that employee satisfaction has improved,
employee sickness has reduced, and savings of almost £92 billion (around 2% of total turnover)
are being made each year.
Among workers, 77% identified a clear link between the four-day week and better quality of life.
The practice is judged particularly attractive by 75% of the Gen Z and Gen X people we surveyed
— and rather than relaxing, they’re using their additional time to upskill, volunteer, and build
side hustles. Two-thirds (67%) of Gen Z respondents said a four-day workweek influences who
they want to work for.
In organizations in which a shorter workweek has been implemented, nearly two-thirds (64%) of
leaders reported increases in staff productivity and work quality due to a reduction of sick days
and overall increased well-being. Another benefit to well-being, respondents noted, was the
reduction of commutes. One less day at work helps make the weekly commute more bearable.
How have most firms implemented a shorter week? Respondents often said the practice is
adopted by splitting employees into a rotating schedule, in which half do not work Mondays and
the other half do not work Fridays. This allows firms to meet their customers’ demands by
/
keeping premises open all week.
But the four-day workweek is not yet a silver bullet. While it enables firms to build competitive
advantages with regards to their employer brand, the survey found that nearly three-quarters
(73%) of leaders cited concerns: regulations regarding work contracts, and the associated
bureaucracy to implement the four-day week, as well as challenges around staffing. All these
elements make it unlikely, from our point of view, that the practice will spread en masse in the
near future.
Some organizations have also scrapped efforts toward a four-day week. In 2019 the London-
based Wellcome Trust, the world’s second-biggest research donor, ended a four-day week for its
800 head office staff; it was “too operationally complex to implement.” In the U.S., Treehouse, a
large tech HR firm, implemented a four-day week in 2016, but as the firm failed to keep up with
competition, it reverted to a five-day week.
Since the Wellcome Trust backtracking, business groups including the Confederation of British
Industry havewarnedthat mandating shorter workweeks weakens industry while hurting
employment by increasing the cost of labor. Take Swedish health care,for example: The city of
Gothenburg needed to hire more nurses to cover hours lost when implementing a six-hour
workday in 2015, costing the city $1.3 million. Critics filed a motion that called on the city
council to kill the plan, arguing it was unfair to continue investing taxpayers’ money in a scheme
that was not economically sustainable. The plan was subsequently scrapped in 2017, and Daniel
Bernmar, the councilor responsible for running Gothenburg’s elderly care said, “Could we do this
[again]? The answer is no, it will be too expensive.
Workers too have reservations. Nearly half (45%) of those we surveyed worried that spending less
time at work would make colleagues think they’re lazy. This suggests there is a paradox in how
employees perceive the practice: They want it implemented but are afraid to engage with it as
first movers.
The recent attempts in the UK suggest the debate around the four-day workweek is only starting.
While it can bring clear benefits with regards to employees’ well-being and ability to focus,
implementation across organizations is made difficult by competitive and structural pressures in
some sectors. In addition, there are still some negativeperceptions of the practice, as well as
concerns among workers regarding the way they will be seen by their peers and superiors.
/
Still, the idea requires proper consideration, and the potential benefits suggest a trial-and-error
approach is the best way forward. Such a path would help us understand under which conditions
a shorter workweek might succeed and when the benefits can outweigh the costs. The countries
and organizations that can crack the code of the four-day week first could build a competitive
advantage, if they can implement it in a way that maximizes the well-being benefit on the longer
term while minimizing the short-term rise in labor and operational costs.
Ben Laker is a Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School and a Global Affairs Commentator for Bloomberg
and Sky News. He specialises in Brexit and advises Governments and Global Corporations around the world. Follow him
@drbenlaker.
Thomas Roulet is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Theory at the Judge Business School and a Fellow of Girton
College, both at the University of Cambridge. He has provided sociological analyses on different aspects of Brexit in
various media outlets (the Telegraph, l’Humanite, Die Zeit). Follow him @thomroulet.
Related Topics: Personnel Policies | Generational Issues
This article is about WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Follow This Topic
Comments
Leave a Comment
Post Comment
1 COMMENTS
James (JT) Turner 2 months ago
The full white paper can be downloaded from https://www.henley.fi/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Journalists-
Regatta-2019-White-Paper-FINAL.pdf
/
Reply 0 0
POSTING GUIDELINES
We hope the conversations that take place on HBR.org will be energetic, constructive, and thought-provoking. To comment, readers must sign in or
register. And to ensure the quality of the discussion, our moderating team will review all comments and may edit them for clarity, length, and
relevance. Comments that are overly promotional, mean-spirited, or off-topic may be deleted per the moderators' judgment. All postings become
the property of Harvard Business Publishing.
Join The Conversation
... In the UK, when the business sector introduced a four-day working week for some full-time employees, employee satisfaction was noted to have increased. They also observed an increase in employees efficiency/productivity and less turnover (Laker & Roulet, 2019). Positive perceived conditions, such as reduced commuting and family responsibilities, do not necessarily promote motivation. ...
Article
Full-text available
Motivation: Working conditions have changed significantly as remote working has become widespread in many countries. These changes were caused by a pandemic, as a result of which the possibility of direct communication as well as control and integration of employees was limited. There are also new cost categories for employees and employers, such as installing a better internet connection, purchasing new hardware and software, and implementing better security for data transmission outside the company’s premises. These changes resulted in changes in the employee motivation factors against the background of organizational and cost conditions, which is important for the proper development of the organization.Aim: The aim of the article is to assess motivation to work remotely, based on a survey of opinions among 450 employees in total in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The assessment was performed by verifying, using the logistic regression method, ten hypotheses describing organizational and cost conditions as well as individual effects, such as career opportunities, increase in knowledge and skills, and the occurrence of stress that arose as a result of working remotely. The motivation to work remotely was verified by establishing the willingness to continue working through an opinion.Results: Motivation in remote work is influenced by both efficient communication and technical assistance provided to the employee remotely. Motivation resulting from the independent organization of working time is also important, and it is based on the decision to choose the duration of work, hours and intensity of its performance. Organizational and cost-related factors are related to motivation, as well as individual effects experienced by the employee. Directly from the survey, it appears that only 26.8% of the respondents incurred higher costs related to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the respondents want to continue it with their current earnings. The study found that employees are motivated to work remotely because the organizational conditions and earnings meet their needs. They also admitted that thanks to remote work, they have a better chance of developing a professional career, as well as a higher level of their knowledge and skills, which is also associated with the motivation to continue working remotely.
... One specific intervention in this context is the modification of exposure time to potential stressors, e.g., by reducing the time the worker is exposed to stressful elements [8]. Relatedly, offering part-time options and shorter working weeks to employees are increasingly advocated as strategies to prevent burnout [8][9][10][11][12]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Job burnout affects countless workers and constitutes a major issue in working life. Prevention strategies such as offering part-time options and shorter working weeks have been widely advocated to address this issue. However, the relationship between shorter work regimes and burnout risk has not yet been investigated across diverse working populations applying validated measures and frameworks for job burnout. Building on the most recent operationalisation of job burnout and the seminal job demands–resources theory, the purpose of the current study is to investigate whether shorter work regimes are associated with lower burnout risk and whether the job demands–resources explain this association. To this end, a heterogenous sample of 1006 employees representative for age and gender completed the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) and Workplace Stressors Assessment Questionnaire (WSAQ). Our mediation analyses yield a very small but significant indirect association between work regimes and burnout risk through job demands, but no significant total or direct association between work regimes and burnout risk. Our result suggests that employees in shorter work regimes experience slightly fewer job demands, but are equally prone to developing burnout as their full-time counterparts. The latter finding raises concerns about the sustainability of burnout prevention that focuses on mere work regimes instead of the root causes of burnout.
... A four-day working week is another tool to limit direct contact. Four-day week formats vary across organizations (Laker & Roulet, 2019), and so is its definition. We understand a four-day week as a working model for the employees to work for four days instead of five (with fitted fulltime working hours into four days) while still being paid full-time. ...
Article
Full-text available
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the urgency of discussing more flexible working models like a four-day workweek. Many employees with social anxiety still fear staying longer in their office premises but do not want to reduce their jobs and professional activities. For them, reducing the number of days is about working smarter within a more flexible schedule. Is working four days a week but earning a full salary: a dream or reality for many employees? From each participating country (Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia), 200 on-site employees participated in this study. The research methodology includes quantitative data using WhatsApp as a research tool. The obtained data shows that a four-day work week is having a moment with a different attitude to a five-day working week. The workers ready to accept it are most frequent in Austria, followed by the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In all countries, older employees preferring a shorter workweek prevail over younger ones, as well as men over women.
Article
While the compressed workweek (CWW) has gained traction in recent years, its impact on firms' financial performance is not well understood. This study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the effect of the CWW on shareholder value. Drawing on social exchange theory and its norm of reciprocity, we introduce a conceptual model on the main effect of the CWW on shareholder value, and the moderating roles of the anticipated type and degree of employee reciprocation. To test the model's predictions, we exploit the announcement of Belgium's mandatory adoption of a CWW in February 2022 as the setting for a policy event study analysis. We find positive average stock price reactions of Belgian listed firms to the CWW's announcement, consistent with investors expecting the CWW to result in favorable employee reciprocation. Stock price reactions are more positive for firms with a lower ex ante employee productivity, suggesting employees are predicted to reciprocate with higher efforts. Stock price reactions are also more positive for firms with a higher reliance on knowledge workers, consistent with these employees deriving a greater utility from flexible working arrangements. Robustness tests, including a placebo analysis and an event study of international firms with Belgian subsidiaries, corroborate our results. Our study offers several theoretical contributions and has practical implications for HR managers and policymakers.
Article
Full-text available
Depuis de nombreuses années, à travers les pays industrialisés, les organisations de tous les secteurs cherchent des stratégies pour améliorer leur productivité ainsi que la qualité de leur environnement de travail. Ce défi a d’ailleurs été amplifié par la pandémie reliée au coronavirus COVID-19 (Fontinha, 2021). Cette nouvelle réalité a amené les organisations à se réinventer pour demeurer compétitives. Parmi les solutions considérées, la semaine de travail de quatre jours retient l’attention des organisations et de la communauté scientifique (Sng et al., 2021). Or, malgré l’aspect prometteur de ce modèle et une poignée d’études sur le sujet, il semble difficile d'obtenir un aperçu clair de ses retombées sur les travailleurs en raison d'un état de la documentation épars et fragmenté. À la lumière de cette situation, la présente étude vise à brosser un portrait des diverses retombées individuelles connues jusqu’à présent de cette modalité de travail. Pour ce faire, la présente recherche s’appuie sur la méthode en cinq étapes de la scoping study, proposée par Arksey et O’Malley (2005) : (1) définition de la question de recherche ; (2) identification des données documentaires pertinentes ; (3) sélection des données documentaires ; (4) classification des données ; (5) analyse, synthèse et présentation des résultats. Sur un potentiel de 2183 écrits, 22 écrits empiriques, théoriques et pratiques ont été compilés et analysés. De cette analyse, cinq grandes catégories regroupant à la fois des retombées positives et négatives ont été dégagées : la productivité, la santé psychologique, l’interface travail-vie personnelle, les relations interpersonnelles et la satisfaction générale. En plus de sensibiliser les organisations aux effets de cette nouvelle alternative de travail, cette étude offre des pistes intéressantes de recherche et d’action aux chercheurs et praticiens désirant maximiser les effets positifs de cette modalité de travail prometteuse.
Article
Trendy w sferze pracy i oczekiwania pracowników stawiają wyzwania nie tylko pracodawcom, ale i managerom. Odpowiedzią na te wyzwania może być wprowadzenie czterodniowego tygodnia pracy. Celem artykułu jest analiza czterodniowego tygodnia pracy, a w jej konsekwencji pogłębione zrozumienie tego modelu pracy oraz dostarczenie praktycznych wskazówek tym spośród managerów, którzy chcieliby wdrożyć tę formę organizacji pracy. Wykorzystano analizę literatury oraz studia przypadków dwóch polskich firm o różnej wielkości. Analiza makrokontekstu uwzględnia globalne i lokalne trendy pracy, ukazując korzyści oraz wyzwania wynikające ze skrócenia czasu pracy. Zidentyfikowane zostaną również wyzwania związane z reorganizacją pracy. Wnioski końcowe dostarczają wskazówek dla managerów, obejmujące dostosowanie struktury organizacyjnej oraz procesów zarządzania do modelu czterodniowego tygodnia pracy. Ograniczenia badania wynikają ze specyfiki organizacji i wyzwań związanych ze skalowalnością poszczególnych rozwiązań. Artykuł przybliża do zrozumienia potencjału i wyzwań związanych z czterodniowym modelem pracy w kontekście współczesnych realiów oraz przyczynia się do wypełnienia luki w wiedzy na temat skutecznych strategii wdrażania nowoczesnych form organizacji pracy.
Article
COVID-19 disrupted ‘non-essential’ work and consumption, providing an unparalleled opportunity to examine work-and-spend culture, which we do via 44 in-depth interviews that capture experiences and reflections during UK lockdowns. Deploying Graeber’s conceptualisation of ‘bullshit jobs’ and related critiques of consumption, we first consider the possibility that contemporary work-and-spend lifestyles may deny the normative separation of work as worthy toil and consumption as its pleasurable opposite. Within such experience, and in addition to Graeber’s bullshit jobs, we find a parallel in bullshit consumption at work, in order to work, and because of work. Yet our findings also highlight that when freed from bullshit, participants engage in more caring practices for the self, others, and their possessions. We propose that much of our work-and-spend lives might be bullshit: routines that promise status, virtue, freedom, and pleasure, but feel meaningless, while displacing satisfying experiences of care. We conclude that a focus on subtractive logics – cutting the bullshit! – can activate both new critiques and optimism about societal arrangements.
Article
Full-text available
(1) Background: We apply the Total Leadership approach to better understand how employees allocate their time across the domains of work, family, community, and self at three points: pre-, during, and post-COVID-19 restrictions. (2) Methods: The study employed a mixed methods design with qualitative and quantitative survey data from 106 Australian employees who worked from home during the pandemic. (3) Findings: Three categories of participants emerged: work-centric, family-centric, and self-centric. The results showed a reduction in time allocated to work during restrictions, an anticipated further reduction post-restriction, and significant increases in the family and self domains. Qualitative analyses confirmed the shift away from work and a divergence between those who preferred the integration of domains verses those who preferred a segmentation approach. (4) Implications: The Total Leadership approach is relevant to this shift in values and priorities away from the work domain, since it encourages employees and employers to take a holistic perspective on their lives. This rethinking could help to reduce burnout and employee turnover—which are particularly salient due to the ‘great resignation’—and could contribute to the sustainability of workforces, as organisations strive to retain and recruit employees who increasingly value work–life balance and wellbeing. (5) Originality: The application of the Total Leadership approach provides a novel theoretical foundation to investigate how employees allocate time across different domains of their post-COVID-19 lives.
Article
Full-text available
This study investigated the case of working arrangement and employee productivity in the service industry in CALABARZON during the pandemic. It determined the profile of organizations and respondents, assessed the extent of practices of adopted AWA, ascertained the significant difference between AWA when grouped according to profile, determined the productivity after adopting AWA, the significant relationship between AWA and productivity, identified the challenges encountered in AWA practice, determined the significant relationship between AWA and the challenges encountered by the employees and develop a framework and strategic action plan to improve/sustain employee productivity. This study used a mixed method of research. The 250 respondents were purposively selected from 25 organizations across three sectors of CALABARZON, namely: hotel and restaurant, education and government. The findings of the study revealed a weak association between the adopted AWA and productivity while a significant relationship between the extent of AWA practice and the challenges encountered by employees. The employees’ challenges are more electricity consumption for hotels and restaurants and government while in education are too much time spent in calls, texts, and emails when working from home, workplace health and safety in the skeleton workforce. Thus, the researchers developed a working arrangement, employee productivity framework, and strategic action plan to improve/sustain employee productivity. Keywords: Alternative working arrangement, employee productivity, COVID-19 pandemic, hotel and restaurant, education, government
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.