The four-day work week, an initiative headed by Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart, aims to support the model of a 4 day work week internationally. After the world’s largest trial for this initiative kicked off last year, we’ve seen some exciting results with over 80% of participating companies sharing positive feedback after having completed the trial.
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Approximately 91 companies and 3,500 workers have already completed a six-month trial of the 4 day week, showing positive results and feedback. According to Good Things Guy, results have shown that almost every business that took part in the trial will be sticking to the 4 day week, with 91% of the companies continuing or planning to continue with the reduced-hour, output-focused 4-day week.
Only 4% of the trial’s participants reported that they would not be continuing.
Participating companies rated their experience with the trial at an average of 8.5/10. Productivity and performance each scored a mean of 7.5/10 and revenue rose by a whopping 35% over the 6-month trial period. Beyond that, fewer workers were reported absent during the trial, and more workers were hired by participating parties.
One of the main focuses of this trial is to observe the changes in the health and well-being of employees. Results show that workers experienced significant increases in mental and physical health. Stress, burnout, fatigue and trouble sleeping all decreased, while overall life and job satisfaction increased. With workers cutting 1 day out of their commute to work and back every week, environmental outcomes also boasted positive results.
“Results are largely steady across workplaces of varying sizes, demonstrating this is an innovation which works for many types of organisations.” says lead researcher Professor Juliet Schor.
Though both men and women boasted positive experiences from the trial, women noted a more positive outcome in balancing non-work duties (which, historically, as archaic as the notion is, often falls into the hands of women). With the extra time on their hands, men took on a greater share of housework and childcare, balancing out home responsibilities.
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Charlotte Lockhart, Co-founder, and Managing Director of 4 Day Week Global says:
“Our team is delighted to be expanding the arguments in favour of a 4 day week today with this new world-class academic research, and we look forward to adding our Australasian pilot results to this data set in the coming weeks and our European, South African, Brazilian and North American results in the coming months.”
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