The world's biggest four-day work week pilot begins... What will happen to productivity?

Question

There's some evidence that workers are just as productive in a 4-day week as a 5-day one. Think Google.com in its "Do no evil" days where every Friday all Google employees were encouraged to work on whatever they want. That's one of Google's fastest periods of growth and how we got awesome stuff like Gmail. Then it all ended when Google was bought out and a Board of Directors took it all away. But will it work at other companies? We're about to learn more.

Thousands of UK workers are starting a four-day work week from Monday with no cut to their pay in the largest trial of its kind. The 6-month pilot program pilot involves 3,300 workers spanning 70 companies.

During the program, workers receive 100% of their pay for working only 80% of their usual week, in exchange for promising to maintain 100% of their productivity.

The program is being run by not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global, Autonomy, a think tank, and the 4 Day Week UK Campaign in partnership with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.

What do you think will be the result?

Kendall · Accepted Answer

As someone who actively works the 4 10's schedule, I don't mind the longer hours for the extra days off. Some days are harder than others but thats anywhere you go. I would say I typically crave time off more often just based on the type of work that I do, but in less labor intensive field I could definitely see how it could be different. In any case I feel more productive in my personal life with more time off, so I works for me!

Georgiy · Answer

Tough one! I don't have any solid data on this issue. Personally, I like the idea. I think work should be task-based, not time-based. I.e., if somebody finishes their assigned task in two days instead of five, they should be free to do whatever in the remaining time. And if people want to work an extra day or two, they're free to do so. So, I'm up for the 4-day work week experiment. Whether it hurts productivity in the long run or not, we'll just have to wait and see.

As an aside, my company is trying this 4-day work, 1-day "innovation" time experiment. But the innovation part is strongly suggested to be spent on something work-related. They don't exactly force us, but keep reminding about problems in the org that could be tackled, and keep asking whether we learned something that could improve this or that product 😂

Donald · Answer

I mean, I'm sure most people aren't 100% productive to begin with, so maybe their productivity overall won't change that much?

Tacet · Answer

I personally do a 7 day work week, but normally around 2-5 hours a day. Really routine based schedule makes doing scheduled tasks very easy, but hard to do work related things that break from the structured schedule.

The world's biggest four-day work week pilot begins... What will happen to productivity?

Worldnews Community

I personally do a 7 day work week, but normally around 2-5 hours a day. Really routine based schedule makes doing scheduled tasks very easy, but hard to do work related things that break from the structured schedule.

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