The study involved 61 organizations and about 2,900 workers who voluntarily adopted truncated work weeks from June to December 2022. Only three organizations decided to the pause the experiment, and two are still considering shorter hours, data released Tuesday showed. The rest were convinced by revenue gains, drops in turnover and lower levels of worker burnout that four is the new five when it comes to work days.
The UK data strongly confirms the findings of smaller trials whose results were released in December, of companies based in the US, Ireland and Australia. That research showed equivalent gains in revenue and employee productivity, as well as drops in absenteeism and turnover. Those pilots were smaller, covering roughly half the number of companies in the UK trial, and a third of the employees.
Though the studies are well-designed and include organizations across a swath of industries, weak points include that the participating organizations skew smaller and that the trials are not randomized: the participating organizations all opt in and invest substantial efforts in trainings and planning—meaning that leaders are biased toward championing shorter work schedules.Employees who got a taste of the shorter workweek in the trial liked what they found.
Tuesday’s fresh UK results help make that business case for the four-day week. Organizational revenue was up 35% from a year earlier and rose by 1.4% during the trial. Though multicompany measures of productivity are difficult, the organizations rated the impact of four-day schedules as positive, averaging 7.5 on a 10-point scale. Employee absenteeism dropped from 2 days a month to 0.
Excellent. It's ridiculous that people work themselves to death. A three day weekend has been shown to work over and over again.
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