The Four-Day Work Week

Source: Bali Demiri/Pexels

The four-day work week (4DWW) is a reduced or compressed work week in which schedules are modified to allow a three-day weekend. There are many options for how the 4DWW can be implemented; however, two are most frequently discussed:

1. Employees move from 40 to 32 hours on the condition that the same performance is delivered in four days as was delivered in five. This version is referred to as 100:80:100, which means that employees will be paid 100 percent of their salaries, while only working 80 percent of the previous hours, but with the same expectations for 100-percent performance and delivery of outcomes. This is the most trialed method.
2. Employees continue to work 40 hours, but this is distributed into four 10-hour workdays, instead of five 8-hour days.

In Iceland, the 4DWW was trialed and has rapidly become the norm with close to 90 percent of the workforce winning the right to request a reduced work week as of 2022. Iceland often leads the way in progressive work and social issues, such as closing the gender pay gap and handling the COVID-19 outbreak.

Iceland is not alone in its interest in this rising workplace trend. This change in the way we work is supported by research, most of which confirms the 4DWW for the benefits to employees and employers alike. A recent study conducted by the World Health Organization reported benefits including greater productivity, happier employees, and reductions in CO₂ emissions. More than productivity, people have strong beliefs about the benefits of a reduced workweek. A UK study that surveyed more than 2,000 employees and 500 leaders found that 70 percent of workers believed a 4DWW would improve the quality of their lives, 67 percent believed their mental health would be improved, and 69 percent predicted improvements in their family lives.

Gender Pay Gap

Other benefits may include strategies to reduce the gender pay gap. Women are often in lower-paid roles due to their need for greater flexibility and part-time work to carry the load as primary carers. Working part-time, often four days a week, is an option many women “choose” when returning to work after career breaks or as children start school. The word choose is in quotation marks, as mothers are often restricted in their options, as someone needs to take on the primary care role for children, and this traditionally and predominantly still falls to women. If the 4DWW became the norm for all employees, this gap in the need for one parent to take lower-paying, part-time work may be lessened. Further research is needed to monitor the effect of the 4DWW on the closing of the gender pay gap. If everyone works part-time (e.g., four days), does this reduce the gender pay gap by opening more time for caring responsibilities and thus securing more balance between parents’ contributions at home?

However, we cannot expect flexible work arrangements alone to mitigate existing inequities. As Chung (2022) argues, flexible work arrangements may counterintuitively amplify existing unequitable practices if structural change and systemic biases are not addressed as part of the process. For example, while we might expect a more egalitarian split when both parents are working full-time in a 4DWW pattern, traditionally male-dominated professions (e.g., construction) are often paid more than jobs more prominently held by women (such as teaching). According to WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge, “Men are twice as likely to be highly paid than women…while it’s virtually the reverse for women, who are substantially overrepresented at the bottom level of all earners.” Without addressing these systemic inequities, the 4DWW will not be able to balance the scales on its own.

The Flexibility Paradox

For those working in aged care, for example, working remotely or reducing to a 4DWW may seem impossible. For restaurants open 24/7, who is meant to cover the cost of staffing more employees if a 4DWW becomes the norm? Even if employees are granted longer weekends under a reduced work week, some will continue to struggle with keeping work from bleeding into their own time. Knowledge workers sometimes have so much flexibility and autonomy that they are "always on," answering emails and working overtime long into the evening and night. This tendency for knowledge workers who have the freedom to work when they choose to just work more is known as the "flexibility paradox." In support of the flexibility paradox, recent findings indicate that only 16 percent of flexible location workers are compensated for non-standard hours (or overtime), contrasted to 28 percent for onsite workers. We can all agree that there are many challenges associated with radical shifts, and deeper explorations of the ethics of flexible work are needed as the ways in which we work continue to evolve.

As with the responsible rollout of any intervention, a critical lens is needed to explore both the potential benefits and the unintended consequences. For instance, say we select Iceland as a model for the way they have implemented the 4DWW, copy the steps they have taken, duplicate the policies that they have put into place, and adopt these in any other country. The result would be ineffective at best and catastrophic at worst. That is because there are other factors in play that make Iceland and other countries quite different places to live and work, with different customs, attitudes, workplace norms, stereotypes, etc. A method of adaption over adoption is necessary, along with trials that are controlled and with measurable outcomes to build evidence-based practice, in each country that is pursuing the 4DWW as an option.