The trial of the four-day workweek is billed as the largest ever in the world. It aims to reduce working hours for companies without slowing down or lowering wages.
Similar trials were held in Spain, Iceland and the United States. They should begin in August in Australia and New Zealand.
Alex Soojung Kim Pang, program director of 4 Day Week Global which organises the trials, said that the six-month UK trial will allow companies to test and collect data. Pressure Drop is designed to increase employee well-being and reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
The Royal Biological Society is also participating in the trial. It says that it wants employees to have “more autonomy”.
She hopes, like Pressure Drop, that a shorter work week will attract new employees and help retain the best in a tight labor market in the United Kingdom.
The unemployment rate of 3.7% is the lowest it has been in almost 50 years, and the number of job openings reached a record high at 1.3 million.
In the service sector, which makes up 80% of the UK’s economy, a shorter work week is easier to implement.
However, distribution of food and beverages is more complex, according to Jonathan Boys, an economist with the Institute for Personal Development, a group of human resource professionals.
He believes that the key to the success of the trial will be to measure productivity, particularly in a service economy, where much of the work can’t be quantified as well as the output of a factory. “If you reduce the workday from five to four days, you lose one day of work and production. […] Will increased productivity make up the day that was lost? […] Without growth, it will be very difficult to sustain the four-day work week.
Aidan Harper, coauthor of “The Case for A Four-Day Week”, a book that advocates four-day work hours, believes that countries that work less have higher productivity.
Phil McParlane, the founder of 4dayweek.io recruitment company, believes that a shorter work week is a win-win situation for both employees and companies. McParlane even refers to a “hiring superpower”. The firm’s recruiter, which specializes in flexible work and four-day-weekly jobs says that the number of companies who want to use its platform to hire has quadrupled over the past two-years. This is due to the rise in hybrid working and the desire for a better standard of living after the two-year pandemic.
