Where does the 4-day work week work?

Where the 4-day work week works! A 32-hour work week just moved closer to reality in the U.S. Senate. New legislation introduced by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders proposes reducing work hours without a pay cut.

The 4-day work week

Maybe xkcd has the simplest solution:

The United Kingdom

However, a recent six-month study conducted in the United Kingdom showed encouraging results for researchers. defenders of the 4-day week.

Among the 61 participating companies, nearly half reported an increase in employee morale.

During the experiment, they had less absenteeism and reduced worker turnover. At the same time, 46% of companies stated that productivity had not changed, while 15% recorded considerable improvements.

Iceland

From 2015 to 2019, researchers looked at the impact of a 4-day work week in Iceland.

Participating businesses ranged from preschools to hospitals, while selected government agencies and offices also participated.

In total, approximately 2,500 workers responded to the same salary for less working time.

The report supported a week of work reduced. Participants stated that they had more time for their family and less stress.

Men helped with childcare and household chores. People reported less burnout and better health.

At work, managers said that new work strategies, such as shorter meetings, preserved productivity.

Since then, 86% of workers in Iceland have been given the right to switch to a shorter working week.

The downside

Sweden

The results were quite different in 2016, when the owner of a Swedish biotechnology company reduced the daily hours of his 30 employees from eight to six, while their salary remained the same.

After a month, he returned to normal because everyone was more worried. People had difficulty contacting unavailable associates when they needed them.

Some stayed late to finish or left the work for their managers to complete.

In another experiment at a nursing home in Gothenburg, Sweden, the results were positive and negative during the two years in which 68 employees were paid full pay for fewer hours.

Working five days a week, six hours a day, staff were less stressed, performed extra activities with elderly residents, and called in sick less frequently.

However, the lost time amounted to US$ 1.3 million (12 million SEK) in pay for the 17 extra employees they needed. So yes, jobs were created, but the program was very expensive.

A 2015 study from the University of Turin found that Italian workers were less productive when the working day fell below eight hours. But the evidence from Germany was the opposite.

Our final result: the year of work

At one end of the OECD spectrum we have Germany, while Colombia records the highest number of hours worked annually:

You see where we've come. Less can be more… but not always.

My sources and more: Thanks to Senator Sanders for inspiring this post. In fact, it's an update to our vision of the 4-day work week several years ago.

And from there, for a third perspective, I discovered much more in this NBER story, in this CNBC world summary, and this WSJ article.

Please note that several of today's sections were in a previous edition economic life publish.