In the UK today, the world's largest trial of a four-day workweek has begun. More than 3,000 workers across a range of companies—from fish and chip shops to banks—will go from five to four work days for the next six months. The workers won't receive a cut in pay for the shorter week so long as their productivity doesn't drop. Nonprofits 4 Day Week Global, 4 Day Week UK Campaign, and labor research firm Autonomy orchestrated the pilot while Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College researchers will analyze the results. From the New York Times:
More than 3,300 workers in banks, marketing, health care, financial services, retail, hospitality and other industries in Britain are taking part in the pilot, the organizers said. [4 Day Week campaign director Joe] Ryle said the data would be collected through interviews and staff surveys, and through the measures each company uses to assess its productivity.
"We'll be analyzing how employees respond to having an extra day off, in terms of stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel and many other aspects of life," Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and the lead researcher on the project, said.
