By Menachem Rephun, Communications Manager, Creative Spirit
Burnout, stress, trouble maintaining a healthy work-life balance: these are just some of the challenges that come with working the standardized 40-hour, 5-day work week. The cementing of the 5-day work week as a national standard dates back to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. However, its actual origins can be traced back to 1926, when it was adopted by the Ford Motor Company. Five years prior to the FLSA’s signing, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had hoped to shorten the workweek to just 30 hours. Unfortunately, this didn’t come to pass. Today, many experts maintain that switching to a 4-day work week would greatly improve work-life balance, productivity, and stress reduction, and they have the research and evidence to support it. “Not losing highly trained individuals, in fields like health care or teaching, to stress and burnout is certainly a worthwhile goal,” Dr. Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College, said, according to a press release. “And at a time when we’ve seen many employers struggle to fill positions, the four-day week can be touted as a benefit.” In 2024, Schor and her colleague, Dr. Wen Fan, conducted a global study that found that after six months of working a four-day work week, participants reported less burnout, better sleep, and higher job satisfaction.
A four-day work week would be just as beneficial for employees who are neurodivergent (i.e., those with autism spectrum disorder, OCD, dyslexia, ADHD, etc.) as it is for those who are neurotypical, if not even more so. Neurodivergent employees often face higher levels of workplace burnout, largely due to sensory overload, executive function fatigue, unconscious bias, and the stress that can come from “masking”, or feeling pressure to hide being neurodivergent. A four-day work week would offer more time to decompress, greatly improving emotional and mental health. Employers would see huge boosts to retention and productivity as well. This is reflected in Schor and Fan’s study, in which 52% of participants reported being more productive despite working fewer hours. According to Business Insider, Schor said that six months into their 4-day work week, 67% of participants reported reduced burnout, 41% reported improved mental health, and 38% reported experiencing better sleep. Meanwhile, a 2022 U.K.-based study— one of the U.K.’s largest single-country trials—found that 34% of employees reported slight improvements from the 4-day work week, while 15% reported significant improvements.
One organization dedicated to implementing the 4-day work week is WorkFour, a nonprofit founded in 2019, in partnership with the 4 Day Week Global Foundation. WorkFour, which has collaborated with researchers at Boston College and Cambridge University, hopes to make the 4-day work week standard practice through union and worker support, local chapters, workplace engagement, and politics and policy (such as pilot and directive bills). WorkFour points out that employers implementing a 4-day work week have reported an average 67% reduction in staff turnover and increased applications. Their research also found that only 9% of employees working 32-hour (i.e. 4-day) work weeks experienced burnout, compared with 42% for those working 40+ hour weeks. Organizations that piloted the 4-day work week also saw an average 36% increase in revenue. “I really think the 4 day work week needs to spread,” Schor was quoted as saying by the Wharton Global Youth Program. “Particularly as we look at the future with AI coming into the workplace in a big way, we’re going to have big productivity increases. We have to ask the question: what do we do with that productivity increase? Do we use it to give people more free time, or do we increase output?” Schor added that “We heard from a number of people in our studies that two days is not enough; a weekend is not enough.” All of this raises the question: how can employers make the 4-day work week a reality?
Making the 4-Day Work Week A Reality
One major proponent of implementing a 4-day work week is Josh Bersin. An industry analyst, author, and educator focusing on workplace trends, Bersin’s essay “How to Actually Execute a 4-Day Work Week” outlines 5 key steps to make the 4-day work week happen. For starters, Bersin writes, employers should define essential work clearly, using tools like objectives and key results to help align tasks with organizational goals. Secondly, they should audit meetings, i.e., saving time by reducing or restructuring meetings. Bersin recommends that employees “focus on tasks aligned with their expertise while low-value activities are automated, outsourced, or eliminated.” He suggests embracing “asynchronous communication”, meaning communication that doesn’t require participants to be available at the same time. This can improve productivity through focused work, reduce pressure, and improve flexibility for teams working across different time zones. The final step Bersin recommends is resetting expectations, letting employees understand that they’re expected to maintain outcomes in fewer hours.
Bersin acknowledges that one of the biggest hurdles in implementing a 4-day work week is convincing employees to achieve the same level of output in a shorter period of time. “Trials show that success requires at least a three-month test period,” he writes, “during which organizations prepare employees through training and redesign of work.” He notes that companies can achieve this through strategies like calendar blocking, focused work sessions, and flexible scheduling. “These initiatives emphasise that the additional day off is not automatic,” he writes. “It is earned by working more efficiently while maintaining results.” He adds that these approaches require transparency with clients, employees, and stakeholders, and that employers can manage expectations by positioning the program as an experiment. A four-day work week, Bersin writes, would not only enhance employee well-being but would strengthen recruitment and retention. “For leaders,” he writes, “this shift presents an opportunity to reassess priorities, remove unnecessary processes, and build organisations focused on outcomes rather than hours.”
Achieving a 4-day work week isn’t just about structural and policy changes: it requires a shift in mindset as well. “Mindset plays a significant role in moving to a shorter work week,” Grace Tallon, chief operating officer at Worktime Reduction, told Professor Julie Kratz in a Forbes.com interview last year. Tallon noted that the standard five-day, eight-hour work structure is “very deeply ingrained, and with it an approach which often uses hours as an ineffective proxy for productivity, and which rewards performative busyness over efficiency. It takes a substantial shift in mindset to embed new norms, habits and behaviors to adopt a reduced-hour, outcomes-focused work model.” With that in mind, Kratz writes that change can be implemented through subtle shifts, rather than completely overhauling workplace norms and culture. According to Tallon, the first shift is a consistent, organization-wide commitment to the 4-day work week transition. “If leaders begin working on the designated day off or working more hours than agreed, it signals to the rest of the team that the commitment is not serious,” she says. In short, “the commitment needs to be demonstrated at all levels of the organization.” The second shift involves practice sessions to prepare teams for the 4-day work week, which involve gradually implementing what the 4-day work week would look like.
Given that switching to a 4-day work week is a major change, it’s natural to expect that not everyone will be on board. Shift #3 involves persuading those holdouts that the 4-day work week is viable and a plus, rather than a drawback. “Leaders need to be clear on the why for the change,” Kratz writes, “emphasize what’s in it for the people and take baby steps to coach people through the change.” She stresses the importance of “meeting people where they are and understanding their hesitations.” The fourth and final shift is to address and acknowledge the limitations of the four-day system. For example, it’s important to be clear and upfront if job sharing and/or redesigning shifts is not a possibility for everyone in the organization. “Don’t pretend this works for everyone if there is a subgroup of the organization for whom it is not possible,” Kratz writes. “Acknowledge their sacrifice and try to find other benefits to close the gap.” To sum up, she writes that companies looking to transition to a 4-day work week must “ensure there is a strong organization-wide commitment, practice first, get the naysayers on board and acknowledge limitations for success.”
Admittedly, there are industries in which a universal 4-day work week may not be viable, such as health care and emergency services, which require 24/7 coverage. “There are two key questions businesses need to ask to ensure a 4-day work week is realistic for them,” OpenAccess.com writes. “Can all roles be performed with flexibility that isn’t detrimental to business performance? And how much further can productivity be improved to support the required flexibility?” They point out that productivity “isn’t just a matter of completing items on an arbitrary to-do list, especially in a flexible work environment.” While there’s still room for additional research, the evidence gathered so far does strongly suggest that for many organizations, a 4-day work week is not only feasible but ideal. For employers and organizations still on the fence about implementing a 4-day work week, it’s worth considering that countries like Belgium, Iceland, and Japan either have policies for the 4-day work week or are offering it as an option. A 2019 trial of the 4-day work week by Microsoft’s Japan division found a 40% boost to productivity, along with a 23% reduction in its electric bill, according to a 2023 report from Wharton at Work. Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand-based trust management company, saw a 20% increase in productivity after running a 4-day work week trial, although employees were not required to complete 5 days’ worth of work in 4 days. Andrew Barnes, Perpetual Guardian’s founder, decided to make the policy permanent after seeing that it also resulted in a 45% increase in employee work-life balance. In short, transitioning to the 4-day work week is achievable through strategizing, commitment, and the courage to break away from the status quo. Incidentally, those are the same approaches that drive growth and innovation in general. The 4-day work week has the potential to redefine employment for millions of Americans who are neurodivergent. In 2025, is your company ready to make a difference?
Sources
Smith, S. (2022). “Moving four-ward? BC researchers assess global four-day week pilot program—and say it could work”, BC News, University Communications, Boston College. https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/bcnews/nation-world-society/sociology/-study-pilots-four-day-work-week.html
Drake, D. (2024). “Your Future Workplace: Intergenerational Offices, Neurodivergent Employees and Four-day Work Weeks”, Wharton Global Youth Program, University of Pennsylvania. https://globalyouth.wharton.upenn.edu/articles/college-careers-jobs/your-future-workplace-intergenerational-offices-neurodivergent-employees-and-four-day-work-weeks/
Bersin, J. (2023). “How to Actually Execute a 4-Day Work Week”, Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/12/how-to-actually-execute-a-4-day-workweek
Wallace, N. (2023). “Why a 4-day week works for some companies but not others”, ClickUp. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/why-4-day-week-works-companies-success/155566/
Kratz, J. (2024). “How To Make The 4-Day Workweek Work For Your Team”, Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliekratz/2024/05/08/how-to-make-the-four-day-workweek-work-for-your-team/
Work Four https://workfour.org/
