Biggest Trial of Four-Day Workweek Finds Workers Are Happier and Feel Just as Productive
The biggest trial confirms another four days the work week makes employees happier
The biggest study on the biggest week over a four -day work week included 141 companies, 90% of which kept the arrangement at the end of the six -month experience
Moving to a four -day work week without losing wages leaves employees happier, healthier and more efficient, according to the largest study of such an intervention so far, encompassing six countries. Research has shown that a six -month work test four days a week reduced professional exhaustion, increased work satisfaction and improved mental and physical health.
The authors of the study had wondered if a week of condensed work would add to the stress of the employees. “When workers want to offer the same productivity, they could work very quickly to do the work, and their well-being could in fact get worse,” said the principal Wen Fan, sociologist at Boston College in Massachusetts. “But that’s not what we found.” Instead, staff stress levels have dropped.
The study was published on July 21 in Nature Human behavior.
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Pandemic upheavals
Employee stress levels and professional exhaustion have skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading many workers to leave their jobs, note the authors. The result was a large number of positions not fulfilled in certain labor markets.
To see if shorter weeks could be the antidote for bad morale, the researchers launched a study of 2,896 people in 141 companies in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Before spending at reduced hours, each company that opted for the overhaul was given about eight weeks to restructure its workflow in order to maintain productivity at 80% of previous working hours, serving loss of time such as unnecessary meetings. Two weeks before the start of the trial, each employee answered a series of questions to assess their well-being, in particular: “Does your work frustrate you?” And “How would you assess your mental health?” After six months on the new calendar, they saw the same questions again.
Overall, workers felt more satisfied with their performance at work and reported better mental health after six months of a shortened work week than before.
Winners and losers?
A current criticism of the four -day work week is that employees cannot produce the same production in four days as in five. The study has not analyzed productivity on a business level, but it offers an explanation of how workers can be more effective for fewer hours. “When people are more well rested, they make fewer mistakes and work more intensely,” said Pedro Gomes, economist at the University of Birkbeck in London. But Gomes would like to see more analysis of productivity impacts.
FAN notes that more than 90% of companies have decided to keep the four -day work week after the trial, indicating that they did not worry about lower profits.
The authors also tried to find out if the positive impacts of shorter work weeks would decline once the system has lost its novelty. They collected data after workers spent 12 months after the start of the trial and found that well-being had been high.
But because companies have voluntarily signed up for testing, the results could overestimate the real effect of four -day work week in a range of companies. And because all the results were self -deprecated, employees may have exaggerated the advantages in the hope of keeping their day additional. The authors call for randomized studies to test the diagram.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication July 21, 2025.
