“It will be possible to volunteer, learn a new skill” or spend more time with family, says Lewis Bloomsfield, one of the British staff who will experience the four-day work week in June.
The brewery where it operates in London, Pressure Drops, will join a massive test with 3,000 employees from about 60 companies starting in June.
The project, billed as the world’s largest reduction in a working day, aims to help companies reduce working hours without cutting wages or income.
Similar tests have been conducted in Spain, Iceland, the United States and Canada, and are due to begin in August in Australia and New Zealand.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, project manager at 4 Day Week Global, the trial support group, says the six-month period in the UK will benefit companies with more time to experiment and collect data.
He told AFP that adaptation should be easier for small and medium businesses, which can implement big changes more quickly.
For Pressure Drop, the goal is to increase employee productivity and well-being, which helps reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
The shorter work week is expected to attract new hires and retain the best staff in the UK, where unemployment has reached its lowest level in nearly 50 years, with a record number of vacancies: 1.3 million, higher than the number of candidates.
Not too pink
A shorter work week is easier to implement in services, and the UK has an advantage in this respect, with this sector accounting for 80% of its GDP.
But for industries like retail and food and beverage, it’s more complicated, adds Jonathan Boyes, an economist at the Institute for Personal Development, a human resources association.
He believes that the biggest challenge will be measuring productivity, particularly in services, where much of the work is qualitative and less easily measurable than factory output.
But for Aidan Harper, co-author of a book promoting the four-day working week (“The Case for a Four Day Week”), countries that work less tend to be more productive.
He notes that “Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands do less than the United Kingdom and have higher productivity levels.” Greece, on the other hand, is a European country with longer working hours, but lower productivity, he says.
Phil McParlane of recruitment firm 4dayweek.io, which specializes in four-day-a-week flexible hours, says the number of companies looking to hire through his platform has jumped from 30 to 120 in the past two years, reflecting increased flexibility. Working and searching for a better quality of life two years after the pandemic.
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