During the global soul-searching that followed the rupture of Covid-19 lockdowns, one idea for how we might live better suddenly seemed plausible: the four-day work week.
The model is simple but somewhat counterintuitive. Employees work fewer hours for the same salary while getting the same amount of (or even more) work done. Advocates say this is made possible by reducing meeting times, streamlining workflows and prioritising work more efficiently.
But despite the hype and the reports of successful trials, the four-day week remains niche.
Last year Bupa and Unilever walked away from trials of reduced work hours, citing the four-day model as “rigid”. Last month Launceston city council scrapped plans to become the first Australian government body to introduce a four-day work week after backlash from the business sector. Yet, after failing to have the four-day work week seriously considered in last year’s productivity roundtable, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has again called for a right for workers to request a four-day work week.
So, given that the majority of full-time workers are still working five days a week, whatever happened to this much promised work-life-balance nirvana?
“It’s certainly not dead, the conversation has become more mature” says Debbie Bailey, the co-chief executive of 4 Day Week Global, a not-for-profit research body that advocates for reduced working hours.
“Under the surface there are organisations, industries and governments all over the world that are moving in the direction of reduced work hours,” she says. “It’s now less about the clickbait headline and more about how can companies implement reduced work hours safely in a variety of ways.”
At Versa, an AI tech company with 38 employees, all staff have taken Wednesdays off since 2018. That makes it the first Australian company to adopt the four-day work week, according t the chief executive, Kath Blackman.
“When there was all the hype about [the four-day work week] during Covid, a lot of businesses were really struggling to find good staff, so it was a real differentiator,” Blackman says.
Today, as the rapid advancement of AI causes rolling layoffs in the tech sector, that labour market has weakened. “There’s a huge pool of talent coming into the market now, you don’t need to be as competitive any more,” she says. The incentive to offer flexibility, at least in her industry, has declined.
But AI has shifted the dial in other ways, Blackman says. Versa is increasingly using AI to maintain or boost productivity despite employees working fewer hours than the norm. “We need to be giving the time saved by AI back to our team,” she says.
“It’s been 100 years since the five-day week became the norm. We’ve had all these technological advancements since then that have made us way more productive, but not once have we thought that we should take that time back for ourselves.”
Are the benefits overblown?
Some countries are already shifting their work patterns; in Iceland the working week has been shortened to 36 hours, and in Belgium workers have a right to a four-day work week – although this is a compression of the standard 40-hour week. In terms of a pure reduction in work days or hours, however, the movement is being led in large part by private-sector employers.
Five hundred and fifty of Medibank’s roughly 3,500 employees work four days a week as part of one of the largest pilot programs in Australia. According to the company, the trial has significantly boosted employee health and job satisfaction. Likewise, all 1,500 staff at the mid-tier accounting firm Grant Thornton have enjoyed a permanent nine-day fortnight since 2024, following a year-long trial that, according to the business, saw staff turnover and sick leave go down while increasingly productivity.
But De Montfort University’s Dr Timothy Campbell is cautious about overly enthusiastic reports of success. Campbell, who has reviewed more than 31 academic studies of four-day week experiments, says many of the positive results of four-day week trials are derived from studies published by advocacy groups or are self-reported by companies.
“One company reports a 27% increase in productivity, a reduction of single-day absenteeism to almost zero and wellness scores that jumped 33%,” he says.
Academic research into the four-day work week finds similar benefits, but usually to a lesser degree, he says. “The media headlines are dominated by the positive outcomes … when more than 50 years of academic research is reviewed, it paints a more conservative and nuanced picture.”
Pilot studies of the four-day work week have also been dominated by white-collar office jobs, raising questions about the feasibility of the model in the broader economy. But Campbell says similar benefits have been reported in blue-collar workplaces, including a US police department and a Lamborghini factory in Italy, though employees were “more likely to suffer from worker fatigue and scheduling problems”.
In Australia, Bailey says interest in the four-day work week is now spilling into other sectors and her organisation is in conversation with local governments, manufacturers and healthcare providers about reduced working hour trials.
‘It’s very hard to change it back’
It was 21 April 1856 when a group of stonemasons downed their tools and marched across Melbourne to demand something radical: an eight-hour working day.
Their victory that day became a landmark moment in the global labour movement, but it would take decades until shorter hours spread through the economy. It wasn’t until 1916 that the Eight Hours Act passed in Victoria and New South Wales, and until 1948 that the 40-hour work week became enshrined in commonwealth law.
For proponents of the four-day work week, the story serves as a comforting reminder – reform to working hours is not something that has ever happened overnight.
University of Sydney’s Prof John Buchanan, who has studied labour markets for more than 30 years, says reducing working hours is “one of the toughest areas of labour market change”.
“Once you change working time, it’s very hard to change it back,” he says.
In that context, Buchanan says the business sector’s fierce opposition to the four-day week proposed for Launceston city council staff was “disappointing” but “entirely predictable”.
“If we believed employer groups we’d still be working 10-plus hours a day, six days a week at subsistence wages,” he says.
Indeed, large employer groups have raised major concerns about the concept of the four-day week. The Australian Industry Group claims there has been a trend of companies quietly walking away from four-day week trials due to a drop in productivity, though it did not provide evidence to support the assertion when asked by Guardian Australia. The Business Council of Australia chief executive, Bran Black, said a union push for a four-day week was a “cruel hoax” that relied on “flawed evidence”.
‘This is about being a modern workplace’
The environmental consultancy Environment Group Australia is trialling a nine-day fortnight for all of its 30 employees. The company’s head of strategy, Filda Keci, believes it’s the first environmental consultancy in Australia to attempt the model.
The trial, which began a few weeks ago, gives employees an extra day off every second week while the business remains open Monday to Friday by staggering staff schedules.
Early signs are encouraging, Keci says. “We’ve noticed an increase in productivity, it seems like there’s more of a driver to get things done,” she says. Granted the trial is successful, she says the longer-term ambition is to move to a four-day week.
“The team has been incredibly grateful,” Keci says. “This is about being a modern workplace.”
The four-day week may remain an experiment but, like the eight-hour day before it, Buchanan says it’s not a question of whether it will become the norm but of how long it will take.
