The world of work is a dynamic environment, where a recent focus on flexibility has turned the topics of employee engagement and attendance into politically charged issues. Implementing a 4-day week doesn’t just affect the business, its workers, and partner services. The extra day can leave gaps that might impact customers, it can shake up the office environment, and create HR headaches. Beyond the benefits, what are the options for implementing a four-day week, and what’s the impact on customer and employee experience?
Clock in, clock out, shake up the work landscape
A myriad of recent black swan events, global upsets and traumas have left many workers thinking about time. Whether its business leaders, or employees, changing societal dynamics are encouraging people to question work/life balance like never before, while also juggling with the perennial business question of how to achieve more, with less.
The remote work era, starting long before COVID, has changed the perception of time and efficiency for many. In uncertain times, its become more valuable for everyone. So much so, 70% of workers in a business survey were prepared to reduce their pay for the benefits of a 4-day week. For all roles, an extra day is a time to recover, destress and enjoy more personal or family time.
Time is also a commercial and political weapon. A bargaining chip, time is used by leaders for leverage or competitive advantage. Whatever side you fall on, few may know the 6-day week was common in the UK some 180 years ago. And that it took extensive pressure and action to reduce it to five. By comparison, today’s battles over the 4-day week are highly publicised and analysed for all to see.
The options for a four-day week
Gartner suggests that the 4-day week is a compelling employee benefit that attracts and retains talent. Before diving into the details, the working method typically runs in one of two patterns.
There’s crunching 5-days worth of work into four days. Typically 10 work hours per day, with adjustments to break times to limit tiredness, stress, boredom and lack of focus.
Or, workers can operate for four standard 8-hour days. These are based on goals of improved focus and productivity to maintain or outpace typical efficiency.
California recently tried to legislate this as the 100:80:100 model. One where workers get 100% pay to work 80% of their time but for 100% (or greater) productivity. Additionally, days off can be rotated among teams to keep office attendance up, and areas like in-house support active.
Either method sees employees maintain their previous salary, but typically businesses add incentives for performance increases. The change also allows companies to revise break patterns, improve productivity analytics and use other methods to track performance. That’s perhaps a trade-off in workplaces with less experience of employee experience efforts.
Working 4-day weeks in the real world
Real world examples have met with varying levels of interest and success. Take Japan’s cultural approach to the four-day week. Tokyo’s flexible working arrangements for citizens aim to improve the quality of family time in the notoriously work-heavy region. An additional perk may boost the nation’s fertility, the lowest on record in 2024. However, due to Japan’s strict workplace traditions, take-up has been low. In the UK, 200 companies have signed up for a permanent 4-day week, after successful trials.
Globally, fledgling start-ups often can’t match the hiring perks that larger companies offer in the battle for talent. By tempting hires with a four-day week, start-ups give them back their most precious asset, well aware that start-up workers typically over achieve. Start-ups are big on AI as a time-saver, (check out Psychology Today’s “How AI May Redefine Our Understanding of Time”) but for those embattled in the world of customer and employee experience, they will likely stick to more pertinent issues.
For any organisation, there needs to be a rationale for the change, with predicated and measurable benefits. Regular progress checks can prove a scheme’s value, and the productivity of individuals and teams. For employees, there’s a boost in overall happiness as they can spend more time on their personal projects or simply relaxing. They are typically happier to be back at work, and — if mixed with remote work — feel more in charge of their output and workloads.
The two sides of the 4-day week employee experience debate
With such a broad and divisive issue, it can be hard for leaders to identify a clear plan. Irish behavioural scientist Dr Dale Whelehan has championed the 4 Day Week Global movement. It encourages businesses to trial different approaches. And focuses on 2025 as the year when smaller firms should experiment to attract and retain employees.
To create a million years of new free time, his team cites 25% revenue growth, 32% drop in resignations and reduced burnout. More importantly, 94% of companies were happy to continue after experiments. Looking beyond a local approach, Whelehan has moved on, championing a “4-Day Week Global.”, which aims to create a sustainable, equitable, and healthy world by using time to rebuild economies and societies.
Opposing this view, following on from their obsession with the work from home (WFH) debate, there are many political and enterprise leaders on the side of property developers and commercial landlords. They were hammered by COVID lockdowns and falling occupancy rates. They may consider a four-day week as a gateway to further WFH opportunities and react accordingly.
Then there are traditional volume, support and retail businesses where human capital is always needed on the frontlines. From healthcare to education, emergency services to parcel couriers. These roles must be filled 24/7 with many working extended 4 days or 3 nights. Leaders will worry about the need for extra staff to cover the existing workload. These highly-traditional roles are harder to convert to a meaningful 4-day week, but society should not leave them behind. Extra staff is probably extra money – that is if they can find those extra staff.
For SMEs, again they fear having to hire extra staff and unlike large organisations they lack the resources to make large capital investments to improve staff productivity.
Business psychologist, John Amaechi OBE, asks the question “Are leaders demanding no agile work and returning to office mandates based on evidence, or are their decisions driven by emotion?” driving a punchy 4-day week online exchange. One where many feel dogma or a lack of bravery to drive change sits behind leadership inertia.
Looking for a 4-day change and the value of working time in 2025
Within smaller businesses, more prosaic issues are blockers to change. Many firms operate in mixed-use facilities with offices and production or manufacturing space, working in an integrated way. They can’t afford to close the office side for a day, reducing the impact of a 4-day week. Rotating office staff days off reduces the permanent feel of these changes.
Whatever changes, the focus must be on worker benefits. Tarveen Forrester, VP of people at Kickstarter highlights in a recent video that, “We are here not only to support the leaders of the business, but also the people that show up here and commit their lives to being a part of our organisations.”
Thinking about time, we witness an ongoing battle. One between business leaders focused on office time, and workers discovering the flexibility to save and enjoy time. Perhaps by not commuting, by achieving their daily personal and work goals more efficiently, and by those who enjoy wasting their time in private rather than burning it in time-honoured office diversionary tactics.