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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Employers can benefit from a four-day week too, a trial suggests
By Sam Hudson, CNN
Updated:
9:30 AM EDT, Thu July 3, 2025
Source: CNN
Switching to a four-day work week can be good for the bottom line,
according to the results of a new trial in the United Kingdom.
For six months between last November and April, nearly 1,000 employees
across 17 companies and other organizations worked a shorter week while
retaining the same pay and workload.
All the 17 entities have kept the shorter work week after the trial
period, the 4 Day Week Foundation, a UK campaign group that organized
the trial, said Thursday.
It wasn’t only workers who reaped the benefits of a shorter week.
Some organizations recorded an increase in revenue and fewer sick days
compared with the same year-ago period.
BrandPipe, a software company based in London, saw its revenue jump
almost 130%, according to a report compiled by the 4 Day Week
Foundation and Boston College in the United States.
“The trial’s been an overwhelming success for BrandPipe,” Geoff
Slaughter, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told the report’s
authors, adding that a four-day week is “a great thing for businesses
to try.”
BrandPipe is one of four organizations that provided data about their
revenue. Of those, three saw a rise in revenue and one a fall during
the trial. The decrease, however, was reported against a different
comparison period – specifically, the six months immediately
preceding the trial.
Four organizations also registered fewer sick and personal days taken
by employees during the trial. The remaining two for which the
information was available recorded a higher number of such days.
The data on revenue and absences is limited, as the report’s authors
acknowledged, writing: “Given this, the findings are purely
descriptive and only provide a limited insight to the impact of the
trial for individual organizations.”
In addition to companies, the 17 organizations included eight
charities, non-profits, non-governmental and voluntary entities. Most
opted for a four-day week, while five chose a nine-day fortnight.
Is this the future?
The outcome of the trial comes hot on the heels of success elsewhere.
During similar experiments in the United States, UK and Germany,
workers reported being happier and healthier.
One year after a large UK trial in 2022, involving 61 organizations, a
large majority were their employees to work a shorter week. Likewise,
trials in the US and Canada in 2022 and 2023 in almost all companies
continuing with the policy.
But these studies are not without their critics.
Michael Sanders, a professor of public policy at King’s College
London, pointed out that such trials are based on self-selection,
meaning that the companies agreeing to take part might be those where a
four-day week would “be taken up enthusiastically.”
Trying a shorter week may work well for these “motivated” employers
and employees but it “doesn’t tell us much about what would happen
if someone else tried it,” Sanders told CNN.
Joe Ryle, campaign director of the 4 Day Week Foundation, responded
that, in the last few years, such trials around the world had involved
hundreds of companies from a wide range of sectors, which had signed up
“with varying degrees of enthusiasm and commitment.”
But in future trials the foundation would like to “add an element of
randomized control where possible,” he added.
However future experiments may be done, one participant in the latest
installment is optimistic about a shorter work week.
“I expect that most organizations will be doing this in the next 10
years or so,” Alan Brunt, CEO of Bron Afon Community Housing in
Wales, told the 4 Day Week Foundation.
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