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Tipping Point for the 4-Day Workweek?

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TIPPING POINT FOR THE 4-DAY WORKWEEK?

With the UK testing a shorter workweek, and trials set for other countries,
momentum for 4-day workweeks is building. But is it enough to convince skeptical
leaders? 


Home
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FOR MORE EXPERT INSIGHTS

AJ van den Berg

Senior Client Partner, London

Alexandra Ghashghai

Senior Client Partner

Evelyn Orr

Head of CEO and Executive Assessment, NA

It makes for an interesting juxtaposition: while some business leaders in the US
are calling on employees to return to the office full-time, the biggest-ever
experiment with a four-day workweek is taking place in the UK. 

More than 3,000 workers and 70 companies across industries in the UK are testing
a four-day workweek in which workers will receive the same salary, and maintain
current productivity levels, in exchange for one day off per week. If
successful, experts say, the six-month trial, now in its second week, could
convince at least some skeptical leaders of the merits of the four-day workweek,
and potentially solidify it as a cornerstone of the future of work.

While it’s been talked about since at least the mid-1950s—Richard Nixon
predicted it would be the norm “in the not too distant future”—the four-day
workweek remained little more than an idea for decades. Then came COVID-19
pandemic, which led organizations down the path “from standardized to
personalized work,” says AJ van den Berg, a workforce transformation expert for
Korn Ferry in London. A variety of issues came to the fore: the importance of
employee well-being, the need for flexibility to accommodate schedules, and the
desire to retain workers in the face of massive resignations. To put it another
way: the four-day workweek may not represent that big a change for some
leaders. 

For others, however, it is still a bridge too far. After two years of remote
work, leaders like Elon Musk, Jamie Dimon, and others are pushing for workers
to return to the office five days a week. Others have criticized hybrid and
remote work, saying they’re for people who lack hustle and don’t want to get
ahead. And there are other business concerns.  “Managers worry about how all the
work will get done,” says Alexandra Ghashghai, a senior client partner in Korn
Ferry’s Private Equity and Industrials practices in London. “Or there is the
concern about people not being available when a client needs them or an
emergency comes up.”

For her part, Evelyn Orr, Korn Ferry’s head of CEO and executive assessment,
North America, says firms that oppose flexibility today are at odds with the
purpose movement and out of step with the trend towards work-life balance. She
points to studies showing that reducing hours or days worked per week increases
employee engagement, motivation, productivity, and retention. “People are
rejecting control tactics,” she says. 

A four-day workweek isn’t possible for many jobs and many industries, of course.
For instance, people who use technical equipment might not be able to increase
their production rate and squeeze it into four days. Moreover, for every study
demonstrating the benefits of a shortened work week, there is another arguing
that a compressed schedule can increase anxiety and stress and decrease
productivity over time. 

One of the biggest challenges to implementing a four-day workweek is that data
can’t be measured and compared between and across industries and jobs, says
Ghashghai. Even if the findings from the UK experiment—along with upcoming
trials in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and Spain—are all positive, she says
that likely won’t change the minds of those leaders who oppose the idea of a
four-day workweek. “They’ll say that what the data shows won’t work for their
company or industry,” she says.  

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