If you’re reading this at your desk, feeling a little tired and wondering where the weekend went, the idea of a four-day work week probably sounds pretty appealing. Just imagine what you could do with an extra day – finally tackle those odd jobs, get outside or simply catch up on sleep.
The idea has been floating around for years. But now the evidence is catching up. Cutting your work week by just one day could lower your stress levels, improve your sleep, boost physical activity – and even enhance your productivity.
That’s the promise of a growing global movement to rethink the modern work week, with trials taking place across Europe, North America and beyond.
In one new study, researchers from Boston College and University College Dublin tracked nearly 3,000 employees across 141 organisations in six English-speaking countries. Over a six-month period, these participants worked up to eight hours less per week without any reduction in pay.
The results, published in Nature Human Behaviour, were impressive: employees reported better mental and physical health, fewer sleeping problems, and lower levels of fatigue – all while maintaining their output. Most companies saw enough value to keep going after the trial ended, with 90 per cent continuing some form of four-day week.
“We see global trends (not just in high-income countries, but in many low- and middle-income countries) where workers are struggling with burnout, long work hours and little time for themselves and for their families,” study author Wen Fan, associate professor of sociology at Boston College in the US, told BBC Science Focus.
“Our four-day work week is a potential way to reimagine how we can reconstruct the work arrangement in order for workers to benefit, and society to benefit as well.”
Hard data
While many trials rely on employee surveys, a recent study in Germany led by Prof Julia Backmann (who oversees the Chair for Transformation of Work and co-directs of the Center for Business Transformation at the University of Münster) set out to gather something rarer: hard data.
Her team tracked stress, activity and sleep using Garmin fitness watches worn by both those taking part in the four-day work week and a control group who kept working full time.
They found that participants in the reduced-hours group experienced significantly less stress, as measured by heart rate variability.
“The four-day work week group had significantly fewer stress minutes on most days,” Backmann told BBC Science Focus. “What I find really interesting is that even during the weekend, they never reached the same stress levels as the control group.”
The difference held across Saturday, which is surprisingly the most stressful day of the week, likely due to errands and family responsibilities, and Sunday, the least stressful. Participants also walked more, exercised more and slept around 38 minutes longer per week.
“They are more active, they are doing more sports, they are less stressed and they also sleep a bit more during the week,” Backmann said.
While the sleep quality data (measuring how well participants slept) are still being processed, early signs all point in one direction, according to Backmann: “This basically supports the idea that the four-day week is, overall, good for wellbeing and health.”
Crucially, these physiological results backed up what participants had already reported in surveys – an important finding, given longstanding concerns about bias in self-reported data in other four-day work week studies. “That’s normally the main criticism,” Backmann said. “But now we actually see that this is also pretty in sync with the objective data.”
As part of the same study, researchers also collected hair samples to measure cortisol, a hormone linked to chronic stress. The results are still being processed, but Backmann expects them later this year. If consistent with the other findings, they could offer another independent line of evidence for the four-day week's health benefits.
In total, the trial involved 41 organisations across Germany, ranging from IT firms to healthcare providers. Not every employee switched to a four-day schedule within each company – some departments in larger firms stayed on full-time hours. Of those that did switch, most reduced their hours without compressing them into longer days. Monthly overtime fell, too.
Fortunately for the CEOs reading this article, no significant changes in revenue were observed under a four-day week, and employee productivity and work intensity both ticked up.
Crucially, the model was widely popular. According to the report, 73 per cent of organisations planned to continue the four-day week in some form, and 82 per cent of workers wanted to stick with it.
The future of work
So, is the Monday-to-Friday slog on its way out? Not so fast, says Prof Cal Newport, an MIT-trained computer scientist at Georgetown University in the US and author of Deep Work. While he agrees that a shorter week can bring some relief, he believes it doesn’t go far enough. “One of the primary sources of burnout in knowledge workers is overload,” he told BBC Science Focus. “They're tackling too many projects, tasks and obligations at once.”
In other words, the problem isn’t just how long we work, but how much we’re expected to do. “Moving to a four-day workweek only indirectly addresses this issue,” he said. “There is some anecdotal evidence that reducing the work week does reduce workloads somewhat, as these new constraints make it easier for people to justify saying ‘no’. But the most effective solution would be to address workloads directly and have systems or rules in place to ensure no one ever has more than a reasonable limit of work on their plate.”
Backmann’s team is now planning to investigate how compressed four-day weeks – where employees squeeze 40 hours into four longer days – compare to genuine reductions in total working time.
In all, the results for a four-day work week are encouraging. Trials across the globe all point to the same conclusion: done well, shorter working weeks can improve health and wellbeing without hurting performance.
But as Newport points out, the time we work may matter less than the expectations we work under. If the four-day week is to stick, it might need to come with a rethink not just of our calendars – but of our capacity.
Read more:
- Four-day work week could boost your health and help the environment
- Could a four-day week really improve productivity and wellbeing?
- Are you better off working from home? Here's what the science says
About our experts
Wen Fan is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston College, in the US. As well as Nature Human Behaviour, her research has been published in the journals Social Forces, Work and Occupations, and Advances in Life Course Research.
Julia Backmann leads the Chair for Transformation of Work and co-director of the Center for Business Transformation at the University of Münster in Germany. Before joining the University of Münster, she was an Assistant Professor at University College Dublin and LMU Munich. In her research, which has already won several international awards, Julia focuses on the effects of social and technological change on (co-)work, leadership and innovation.
Cal Newport is an MIT-trained computer science professor at Georgetown University, in the US, who also writes about the intersections of technology, work, and the quest to find depth in an increasingly distracted world. He has authored eight books, including Slow Productivity, A World Without Email, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work.