For some it sounds like a no-brainer. Others think it’s too good to be true. To traditionalists who pride themselves on their work ethic, it’s nothing more than a shirker’s charter.
The idea of a four-day working week – with five days’ pay – to its advocates, is as seductive as it is simple.
Fewer hours for the same pay and the same output? Hey presto, everyone gains.
Employees benefit from a better work-life balance and well-being, with an extra day off to spend with friends and family.
Companies bag an instant productivity boost as inefficient ways of working are purged and output per hour is boosted.
Tasks that used to take five days can now be done in four, helped by new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) – or so it is claimed.
Post-pandemic, there has been a clamour for more flexible ways of working
Critics, however, argue it is little more than a pipe-dream that will be seized upon by those simply seeking an easier life – to the detriment of the economy and society at a time when we desperately need growth.
For believers in the virtues of hard graft, it is grist to the mill that the leader of the 4 Day Week campaign, Joe Ryle, is a former climate activist and adviser to Marxist former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
But there is no denying that, post-pandemic, there has been a clamour for more flexible ways of working.
The ‘four days work for five days pay’ idea is catching on in both boardrooms and on shopfloors across the country.
Firms such as supermarket giant Asda and digital lender Atom Bank are already giving the shorter working week a go.
But can working fewer hours really be the key to boosting productivity and growth? Or is it, as sceptics believe, just another excuse for the workshy at a time when the army of those who are economically inactive has reached record levels of over nine million?
The push for the shorter working week comes as deputy prime minister Angela Rayner draws up controversial plans to give employees much greater rights and flexibility.
So could a shorter working week be next on her radical agenda?
The pursuit of more leisure and less labour is nothing new.
In an essay in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that a hundred years from then, the working week would be down to 15 hours.
He was sure that, having solved the economic problems gripping the world back then, living standards in developed countries would be much higher, giving people the opportunity to enjoy far more down-time.
It is now only six years until 2030 and Keynes’ vision still looks a long way off.
Most of us do, however, spend less time at work than our grandparents and great-grandparents.
Until the late 19th Century, six days of toil were the norm. Then half-day work on Saturday was introduced to allow factory workers in Britain’s great industrial cities the chance to watch or play football in the afternoon.
Just under a century ago US car giant Ford became one of the first firms to introduce the five-day working week and the two-day weekend we now view as standard.
Wages, perhaps surprisingly, did not fall when people began to work reduced hours.
In fact they rose in real terms. Employers could afford to pay employees more for less work, because in the early 20th Century, they were much more productive when they were toiling away.
This was largely thanks to mechanisation of processes that had been done manually.
Productivity gains were driven by innovation, greater efficiency and investment in the latest plant and machinery – and this lifted living standards.
The question now is whether we can pull off the same trick – less work, more prosperity – in the 21st Century. Sadly, that looks doubtful, even with advances in technology including AI.
Between 1945 and 1975 the UK’s average annual productivity growth rate – as measured by output per hour worked – was around 3.6 per cent, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
In the next three decades, it fell to around 2.1 per cent.
Since the 2008 financial crisis productivity growth in the UK has declined even further to 0.2 per cent.
One of the main reasons for this dramatic decline is decades of under-investment.
Investment – both in the private and public sector – is crucial to the creation of good-quality, well-paid jobs, driving innovation and technological progress, and economic stability.
The UK consistently ranks the lowest in the investment league of G7 leading economies and among the worst in the club of 37 most developed countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In simple terms, employers haven’t provided staff with the tools to do the job better – and it has cost each of us dearly.
If productivity growth had continued at 2 per cent since 2008, each worker would be an extra £5,000 a year better off as workers and employers shared the benefits, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, citing Office for National Statistics figures.
We are still working just as long as we did before the financial crisis, but typically, our real wages and living standards have stagnated.
An average full-time British worker clocked up 1,650 hours in 2022, say the latest figures available, according to economists at Barclays bank.
The leader of the 4 Day Week campaign, Joe Ryle, is a former climate activist
That equates to just over 34 hours a week assuming four weeks’ annual holiday – just five per cent less than forty years ago.
British workers put in more time at the grindstone than their counterparts in France and Spain – and on average, we work 27 per cent more hours typically than the industrious Germans.
We still work fewer hours than Americans (36 hours a week), however, and, perhaps surprisingly, the Italians (35 hours a week). So much for La Dolce Vita.
The UK economy is now recovering faster than expected from the twin shocks of the pandemic and double-digit inflation.
But our dire productivity performance is holding us back if growth is to return to its long-term average of around 2.5 per cent
Fans of the four day week claim they have the answer.
Their thesis is that reducing total staff hours would be an incentive for companies to laser in on what really needs to be done, and to make sure these tasks are carried out at maximum efficiency.
‘It’s a chance to focus on what makes an organisation successful,’ says Joe Ryle, leader of the 4 Day Week campaign and former Labour Party press officer.
It is a mantra that many working mothers would say they have followed for years, squeezing a full week’s work into three or four days by dint of ruthless efficiency – though in their case, still on part-time pay.
Covid has been a catalyst for rethinking the way we work. The traditional lines between business and leisure blurred as millions worked from home.
Four years after the pandemic lockdowns began, flexible work patterns are now mainstream – despite concerns of ‘shirking at home’ and worries remote workers are harder to manage.
A record number of job advertisements now offer ‘hybrid’ working that splits time between home and the office.
‘Work and private life have become intermingled,’ says Bart van Ark, productivity professor at Manchester University.
The four-day week movement is very much part of this flexible working agenda.
In a recent trial, 61 mostly small and medium-sized companies volunteered to move to a four-day working week with no loss of pay for employees.
The pilot, the world’s largest, was done in 2022 and was overseen by researchers at Cambridge University and the Autonomy think-tank.
Some 71pc of employees reported less burnout and 39pc said they were less stressed during the trial, while levels of anxiety, fatigue and sleep issues also fell and work-life balance measures improved.
Company revenues were up slightly, rising by about 1.4 per cent on average.
There was a substantial decline (57 per cent) in the number of workers who said they were likely to quit and the number of sick days taken dropped by almost two-thirds.
Eighteen months on and Ryle says 54 of the original firms in the trial have stuck with the four-day week.
‘It’s a win-win for employers and workers,’ he insists.
Emboldened by the trial’s findings, Ryle is inviting more firms to take part in a new pilot in the autumn – and is hoping Sir Keir Starmer’s government will back his movement.
‘Workers want more freedom and autonomy from work,’ he continues. ‘With artificial intelligence there is a huge opportunity to be working less,’ Ryle continues.
‘Technology should be for the benefit of the workers and a four-day working week is an obvious example of that,’ he adds.
John Longworth, chairman of the Independent Business Network of family firms, has a blunt riposte.
‘The productivity argument is bunk,’ he says.
‘If people can do in four days what they have been doing in five they should have a 20 per cent pay cut,’ he adds.
Alternatively, they could continue working five days and produce even more, critics say.
Firms such as supermarket giant Asda are already giving the shorter working week a go
Experts also point out that not all sectors can transition easily to a four-day work week.
Service industries like hospitality find it hard to maintain customer service levels with reduced hours.
The need for round-the-clock operations in healthcare, retail, and other essential services poses extra challenges .
‘Reducing working hours without cutting pay could be a key part of some businesses’ approach to recruiting and retaining the people that they need to succeed,’ says John Foster, chief campaigns and policy officer at the Confederation of British Industry lobby group.
‘But there isn’t a ‘’one-size fits all’’ answer,’ he adds. ‘A four-day week is unlikely to pay for itself in many industries.’
It’s a view echoed by shadow business minister Kevin Hollinrake, who says employers should decide the best way to organise their workforce, ‘not politicians’.
‘All good employers will use the most productive working patterns,’ he adds.
‘I have come across businesses that do successfully operate a four day working week but they should free to do what works best for them.’
Productivity guru van Ark notes that in Ryle’s trial the participating companies were both quite small and ‘self-selecting’, meaning they had an incentive and commitment to make the experiment work.
Independent economist Julian Jessop also questions the impressive-seeming results.
‘It is no surprise that people are happier working fewer hours for the same pay,’ he says. But workers’ preference, he adds, is not necessarily the best criterion for whether a shorter working week is best for firms and the economy.
It plainly cannot be the main test – or else why not lobby for a three-day week?’ he asks.
Ryle believes ‘the next big moment will be when a FTSE100 company goes to a four-day week.’
He may have to wait some time.
Unilever, the consumer goods group that is often an early adopter of the latest corporate fad, it testing a four-day week in Australia and New Zealand but it has ‘no plans’ to extend the trial to the UK.
One big company that has come a cropper with its shorter working week trial is Asda, which asked workers in 20 of its stores to pack 44 hours into four days.
The private equity-owned supermarket giant had to shelve those plans earlier this month after employees complained their longer shifts were ‘physically demanding’ and left them ‘exhausted’ on their day off.
The lack of paid breaks probably didn’t help but experts say lessons from the Asda’s failed experiment run deeper.
‘It’s how not to do it,’ says Anthony Painter of the Chartered Management Institute, which represents professional managers.
Asda workers ended up with ‘a worse deal’ because they worked the same hours ‘but more intensely’, he notes.
This was not a ‘four day week’ as such but the same hours compressed into fewer days.
Asda said it would ‘continue to test different flexible working patterns to assess how these can benefit our colleagues and our business’.
‘Work and private life have become intermingled,’ says Bart van Ark, productivity professor at Manchester University
Technology may hold the key. AI promises to liberate workers from mundane tasks, leaving them free to pursue other more productive activities.
But Britain’s recent poor productivity record suggests that time saved from the introduction of new technology can easily be frittered away. Instead of being more efficient at their jobs, employees may be distracted doom-scrolling social media or dealing with hundreds of emails a day.
‘There’s a lot of gunk in our organisational systems,’ says the CMI’s Painter.
‘And a lot of that has been created by technology in the form of activity that isn’t productive,’ he adds.
AI ‘may gunk up the system again’, he fears.
For him, the key question about the four-day week – as with any form of flexible working – is ‘who benefits?’
A recent survey found that nine in ten chief executives regularly work from home – despite companies trying to force workers back to their desks.
‘Professionals who can organise their work [that way] will,’ says Painter. ‘But where in-person work is required – if you are a supermarket worker, van driver or nurse – the benefits are difficult to secure.’
Productivity professor van Ark thinks the four-day week is here to stay. He even predicts that in 20 years half of all companies will have adopted it.
But he warns that a shorter working week ‘is no quick fix’.
‘You can’t increase productivity by 20pc overnight. Nothing comes for free.’
Jessop agrees: ‘Some of the claims being made are frankly implausible. ‘
‘It is dangerous to pretend that a four-day week could be rolled out across the whole economy without any cost in terms of output, service levels or pay.’
‘There’s a lot of utopian thinking here – and significant risks.’
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