Nearly 1,000 Britons Will Keep Four-Day Work Week After Trial

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Nearly 1,000 British workers will keep a shorter working week after the latest trial of a four-day week and similar changes to traditional working patterns. All 17 British businesses in a six-month trial of the four-day week said they would continue with an arrangement consisting of either four days a week or nine days a fortnight. All the employees remained on their full salary. The trial was organized by the 4 Day Week Foundation, a group campaigning for more businesses to take up shorter working weeks.

The latest test follows a larger six-month pilot in 2022, involving almost 3,000 employees, which ended in 56 of 61 companies cutting down their hours from a five-day working week. Researchers at Boston College, a US university, said the findings from the latest trial were 'extremely positive' for workers. They found that 62% of workers reported that they experienced less burnout during the trial, according to a poll of 89 people. Forty-five percent of those polled said they felt 'more satisfied with life.'

The 4 Day Week Foundation has run successive trials to gather data and demonstrate how companies can make the switch. In January, the foundation said more than 5,000 people from a previous wave had started the year permanently working a four-day week. Companies involved in the latest trial, which started in November, included charities and professional services firms, with the number of employees at each employer ranging between five and 400. They included the British Society for Immunology and Crate Brewery in Hackney, east London. The small web software company BrandPipe said that the latest trial had been a success for the business, coinciding with increased sales. Geoff Slaughter, BrandPipe's chief executive, said: 'The trial's been an overwhelming success because it has been the launchpad for us to consider what constitutes efficiency, and financial performance is double what it was before.'

Slaughter added: 'If we're going to see it rolled out more substantially across different sectors, there should be incentives for early adopters, because we're creating the blueprint for the future.'

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