Opinion
The four-day week worked. Now comes the hard part
Pilots showed stable output and happier staff. Extending the model beyond offices is a different challenge entirely.
Economics editor
5 min read
Most four-day-week pilots have taken place in office-based companies.
The evidence is in. Across dozens of pilots, companies that moved to a four-day week kept output stable, cut sick days and struggled less to hire.
So why has so little changed?
The office problem
Most pilots involved knowledge workers whose output is hard to measure and easy to compress. Hospitals, schools and factories cannot simply close on Fridays.
A policy that only works for people with laptops is not a labour policy. It is a perk.
A better question
Instead of asking whether everyone can work four days, we should ask how much of the productivity gain from automation reaches workers as time rather than profit. That is the argument worth having.
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Tomasz Wren
Economics editor
Tomasz writes about money, work and why the numbers rarely tell the whole story.
