Largest Trial Yet Finds Four-Day Workweek Boosts Worker Well-Being

Echoing previous research from countries including Iceland and the United Kingdom, the biggest trial ever conducted of a four-day workweek with no reduction in pay found that the shift positively impacts workers' well-being.

For the new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, 4 Day Week Global invited independent researchers to collect and analyze data. Four experts from Boston College in the United States and Ireland's University College Dublin collected data from 2,896 employees across 141 organizations in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.

The organizations underwent a "pre-trial work reorganization to improve efficiency and collaboration, followed by a six-month trial," the paper details. Analysis of the data collected "shows improvements in burnout, job satisfaction, mental health, and physical health—a pattern not observed in 12 control companies."

"Both company-level and individual-level reductions in hours are correlated with well-being gains, with larger individual-level (but not company-level) reductions associated with greater improvements in well-being," the paper says. "Three key factors mediate the relationship: improved self-reported work ability, reduced sleep problems, and decreased fatigue. The results indicate that income-preserving four-day workweeks are an effective organizational intervention for enhancing workers' well-being."

There are limitations to the study, which the authors acknowledged: The organizations were generally smaller companies in English-speaking countries and participated voluntarily, and the outcomes were self-reported by workers. Given all that, the experts encouraged future randomized, government-backed research.

Still, the apparent impact of the study seems to bolster researchers' conclusions. According to co-author Wen Fan, an associate professor of sociology at Boston College, over 90% of companies opted to keep the four-day workweek after the trial.

In coverage of the study published by Boston College, both Fan and her co-author and colleague in Boston, Juliet Schor, noted how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted conversations about working conditions, including the length of the workweek.

"This would've been a difficult sell pre-Covid—it would've struck a lot of people as pie-in-the-sky, and not feasible for companies," said Schor. "But the pandemic created such levels of stress and burnout, and led many employees to say, 'I want to live my life differently,' and this created more of a space for reimagining work—and, as part of that, the four-day week."

Noting that the "traditional" 40-hour, in-office model is still dominant in many places, Fan said: "Social change is always difficult, especially when it comes to challenging the deep-seated institutional logics dictating how, when, and where we work. Let's hope we don't waste the crisis of Covid in terms of the profound workplace innovations it has precipitated."

The new study comes amid the Trump administration's "barrage of attacks on workers," with the U.S. Department of Labor planning to overhaul dozens of rules intended to protect employees from exploitation and wage theft.