As a company already offering a four-day week to its employees, we were incredibly curious about the National Four-Day Week trial taking place last June-December (2022).

In our last two articles exploring the topic, we identified the overall benefits to both companies and employees in addition to the history involved in making a change to the traditional workweek.

Now the trial has finished, the official findings are out. A staggering 92% of companies are continuing with the four-day week (figure one). The reasons for this are clear, 71% of employees reported a decrease in ‘burnout’, meaning exhaustion or frustration (figure two), and secondly, 40% of employees reported a decrease in sleep difficulties (figure three).

These aren’t the only benefits, a four-day week increases everyone’s work life-balance, which can improve mental health, rest, and overall motivation.

The benefits for employees may seem more obvious, but what about businesses? Companies in the trial saw that their revenue stayed virtually the same, rising 1.4% on average (figure four). This shows that reducing the traditional workweek down to four days can in fact make a positive difference to revenue, rather than impacting it negatively.

The reasons for the four-day week are clear. This is the first trial of its kind in the UK, and workplaces still have a long way to go to optimise employee’s health and wellbeing while maintaining the growth of the business. However, this trial and its conclusions are a positive start to new ways of working. We expect to see this trial’s influence unfold in many other companies as time goes on.

Images taken from https://twitter.com/4Day_Week and information taken from https://autonomy.work/portfolio/uk4dwpilotresults/