London
\n CNN
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Switching to a four-day work week can be good for the bottom line, according to the results of a new trial in the United Kingdom.\n <\/p>\n
\n For six months between last November and April, nearly 1,000 employees across 17 companies and other organizations worked a shorter week while retaining the same pay and workload.\n <\/p>\n
\n All the 17 entities have kept the shorter work week after the trial period, the 4 Day Week Foundation, a UK campaign group that organized the trial, said Thursday.\n <\/p>\n
\n It wasn\u2019t only workers who reaped the benefits of a shorter week. Some organizations recorded an increase in revenue and fewer sick days compared with the same year-ago period.\n <\/p>\n
\n BrandPipe, a software company based in London, saw its revenue jump almost 130%, according to a report compiled by the 4 Day Week Foundation and Boston College in the United States.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe trial\u2019s been an overwhelming success for BrandPipe,\u201d Geoff Slaughter, the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO, told the report\u2019s authors, adding that a four-day week is \u201ca great thing for businesses to try.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n BrandPipe is one of four organizations that provided data about their revenue. Of those, three saw a rise in revenue and one a fall during the trial. The decrease, however, was reported against a different comparison period \u2013 specifically, the six months immediately preceding the trial.\n <\/p>\n
\n Four organizations also registered fewer sick and personal days taken by employees during the trial. The remaining two for which the information was available recorded a higher number of such days.\n <\/p>\n
\n The data on revenue and absences is limited, as the report\u2019s authors acknowledged, writing: \u201cGiven this, the findings are purely descriptive and only provide a limited insight to the impact of the trial for individual organizations.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n In addition to companies, the 17 organizations included eight charities, non-profits, non-governmental and voluntary entities. Most opted for a four-day week, while five chose a nine-day fortnight.\n <\/p>\n
\n The outcome of the trial comes hot on the heels of success elsewhere.\n <\/p>\n
\n During similar experiments in the United States, UK and Germany, workers reported being happier and healthier.\n <\/p>\n
\n One year after a large UK trial in 2022, involving 61 organizations, a large majority were still allowing<\/a> their employees to work a shorter week. Likewise, trials in the US and Canada in 2022 and 2023 resulted<\/a> in almost all companies continuing with the policy.\n <\/p>\n \n But these studies are not without their critics.\n <\/p>\n \n Michael Sanders, a professor of public policy at King\u2019s College London, pointed out that such trials are based on self-selection, meaning that the companies agreeing to take part might be those where a four-day week would \u201cbe taken up enthusiastically.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Trying a shorter week may work well for these \u201cmotivated\u201d employers and employees but it \u201cdoesn\u2019t tell us much about what would happen if someone else tried it,\u201d Sanders told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n Joe Ryle, campaign director of the 4 Day Week Foundation, responded that, in the last few years, such trials around the world had involved hundreds of companies from a wide range of sectors, which had signed up \u201cwith varying degrees of enthusiasm and commitment.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But in future trials the foundation would like to \u201cadd an element of randomized control where possible,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n \n However future experiments may be done, one participant in the latest installment is optimistic about a shorter work week.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI expect that most organizations will be doing this in the next 10 years or so,\u201d Alan Brunt, CEO of Bron Afon Community Housing in Wales, told the 4 Day Week Foundation.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Switching to a four-day work week can be good for the bottom line, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,63,99,180],"class_list":{"0":"post-55037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}