The current working day was implemented more than 100 years ago. However, neither the current works are the same as a century ago, nor are the tools. Therefore, governments are looking for new workday models that better adapt to the current needs of companies and employees.
While large companies in the United States insist on the return to the office urging their employees to make longer working hours, in the United Kingdom more and more companies are betting on a different alternative: the four -day work week.
The United Kingdom wants to work less days. In 2025, more than 200 British companies have decided to implement the four -day work week. These companies use more than 5,000 people and cover a wide range of sectors, from marketing and technology to consulting, charity and industrial sector. 59 of them are based in London, which reflects the commitment of the City’s companies with the well -being of their templates.
The working day model for this project will be 32 hours a week without wage loss or other benefits for employees, in an eight -hour and four working scheme. As declared to The Guardian Joe Ryle, campaign director of 4 Day Week Foundation who audits the change of day in those companies, “the four -day work week offers people the freedom to live happier and more full lives.”
As hundreds of British companies and a town hall have already demonstrated, a four -day work week without loss of salary can be beneficial for both workers and employers. “
Four -day working week 2.0. This is the second project of these characteristics that is carried out in the United Kingdom. In 2022, the British government brought together 70 companies to carry out one of the longest pilot tests, since the companies that participated in that call still provide data to the project.
Not all the companies participating in the first test of the United Kingdom continued with the day four days after the end of the pilot program. However, the success of calling this second initiative reveals the growing interest of companies to find new ways of reconciling the family and work life of their employees.
Improvement supported by data. One of the main advantages of the new four -day work week projects is that they are no longer “blind” as in the first experiments that were done throughout the world. The evidence of the United Kingdom, Germany, Valencia, Iceland, Portuguelo South Africasirven de Base on which to build a more solid strategy for these 200 companies.
In the results collected by the different projects, most participating companies recorded increases in productivity and a significant reduction in staff rotation, as well as a greater commitment of the workforce and improvements in their physical and mental well -being. In addition, thanks to the free time that employees, trade and local leisure win is dynamic, which generates benefits for the entire community, not only for the companies that apply it.
Success is not guaranteed. Before reaching these benefits, companies had to undergo an optimization period to change their way of working and even adopt new tools to adapt processes that occupied them a good part of the day. In this optimization is the key to the success of this type of initiatives, since it is possible to improve productivity using less working time.
However, not all companies manage to adapt their work system to the new day. In each test of the four -day week there have been companies that have not continued with that model of day and have returned to the five -day day format, although with some type of improvement in a shorter way. Others, on the other hand, will never return to the five -day week.
Of working more when working less. The data suggest that workers can only be maintained productive for a certain time during their day, so applying a weekly day of 60 or 80 hours as they are asking for some US technological ones is counterproductive and does not improve productivity.
The European approach, and especially that of the United Kingdom, is to walk towards a flexible and shorter working day through the optimization of productive processes, not to exhaust employees with marathon working hours.
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Imagen | Unsplash (Jason Goodman, William Warby)
