Nearly 1,000 British workers will keep a shorter working week after the latest trial of a four-day week and similar changes to traditional working patterns.<\/p>\n
All 17 British businesses in a six-month trial of the four-day week said they would continue with an arrangement consisting of either four days a week or nine days a fortnight. All the employees remained on their full salary.<\/p>\n
The trial was organised by the 4 Day Week Foundation<\/a>, a group campaigning for more businesses to take up shorter working weeks.<\/p>\n The latest test follows a larger six-month pilot in 2022, involving almost 3,000 employees, which ended in 56 of 61 companies cutting down their hours<\/a> from a five-day working week.<\/p>\n The 4 Day Week Foundation is hoping to build on the shift around the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century, when campaigns led by trade unions gave birth to the two-day weekend<\/a>. The previous norm for many people in Britain and other traditionally Christian countries had been a six-day working week, with time off only on Sundays.<\/p>\n Campaigners and some economists argue that the four-day week can offer benefits to workers such as less strain on their mental health, and to businesses, including more motivated staff and easier recruitment and retention.<\/p>\n Researchers at Boston College, a US university, said the findings from the latest trial were \u201cextremely positive\u201d for workers. They found that 62% of workers reported that they experienced less burnout during the trial, according to a poll of 89 people. Forty-five percent of those polled said they felt \u201cmore satisfied with life\u201d.<\/p>\n The 4 Day Week Foundation has run successive trials to gather data and demonstrate how companies can make the switch. In January, the foundation said more than 5,000 people from a previous wave<\/a> had started the year permanently working a four-day week.<\/p>\n Companies involved in the latest trial, which started in November<\/a>, included charities and professional services firms, with the number of employees at each employer ranging between five and 400. They included the British Society for Immunology and Crate Brewery in Hackney, east London<\/a>,<\/p>\n Campaigners hope they can build momentum for the change. The 4 Day Week Foundation said the government should create a working time council to coordinate policy between business and industry leaders as well as trade unions.<\/p>\n The concept of the four-day week faced strong opposition from the previous Conservative government<\/a>. Labour ministers have previously expressed more support for the concept, although they have offered little in the way of formal recognition since coming to power in 2024.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In 2023, Angela Rayner, who has since become deputy prime minister, said: \u201cIf you can deliver within a four-day working week, then why not. I think people will cotton on to the fact that it\u2019s really good, if it works for their sector and boosts productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n The small web software company BrandPipe said that the latest trial had been a success for the business, coinciding with increased sales. Geoff Slaughter, BrandPipe\u2019s chief executive, said: \u201cThe trial\u2019s been an overwhelming success because it has been the launchpad for us to consider what constitutes efficiency, and financial performance is double what it was before.\u201d<\/p>\n Slaughter added: \u201cIf we\u2019re going to see it rolled out more substantially across different sectors, there should be incentives for early adopters, because we\u2019re creating the blueprint for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 1,000 British workers will keep a shorter working week after the latest trial of a four-day week…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":40113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,420,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-40112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114799285599970735","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}