Key Takeaways
- The largest ever study of a four-day work week found that employees were happier and had better job satisfaction.
- The study looked at 2,896 employees at 141 companies in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
- After the study’s conclusion, 90% of companies had permanently switched to a shortened work week.
The evidence is growing that a shorter work week is better not just for workers, but for employers as well.
The largest-ever study of a four-day work week found that employees working fewer hours weren’t just happier, but they also maintained productivity and had better job satisfaction, according to an article on the study published by Scientific American. In fact, the four-day work week was so successful that most companies kept the reduced schedule even after the study ended.
Published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, the study looked at 2,896 employees at 141 companies in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Shorter Week, Less Stress
Before shifting to the reduced four-day work week, companies involved in the study restructured their workflow to maintain 80% of a worker’s weekly productivity by eliminating activities like unnecessary meetings. Some researchers suspected that the condensed schedule would lead to more stress for workers who hurried to get their tasks completed in time.
“When workers want to deliver the same productivity, they might work very rapidly to get the job done, and their well-being might actually worsen,” said lead author Wen Fan, a sociologist at Boston College in Massachusetts, in the Scientific American article. “But that’s not what we found.”
Overall, workers felt better job satisfaction and reported better mental health after six months of the study. And while the study didn’t look at whether companies’ productivity levels dropped, it did say that 90% of companies kept the shorter work week even after the trial ended, indicating they weren’t worried about a dip in profits.
The study did leave some questions unanswered. For example, since employees self-reported the results, researchers wondered whether they over-emphasized the positive benefits in an effort to retain the extra day off.
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