The employees were better off – but so were the companies. A British pilot project for a four-day week was so successful that most of the companies involved want to stick with the concept. The findings should also be of interest to other employers.
Only work four days, but still get the full salary: sounds like a utopia that is too good to be true. In fact, this employee’s dream is apparently not so far-fetched, as a pilot project on the four-day week in Great Britain shows. The six-month test with almost 3,000 employees was so successful that the vast majority of participating companies want to keep the concept, as the researchers involved have now announced.
According to the current evaluation, 56 of the 61 employers want to keep the four-day week even after the end of the test phase. 18 companies are so convinced that they have already introduced the concept permanently. Of the remaining five companies, two have extended the test period and only three companies have stopped the four-day week again.
What is probably the most astonishing result of the project: Not only did the employees like the four-day week (90 percent definitely want to keep it), but the employers also gave it an extremely positive rating: on a 10-point scale, they gave an average of 8 ,3 points. How can that be?