Businesses choose to follow the four-day workweek after testing its benefits for six months. The test ran from June to December 2022. The participating companies included a brewery, a fish and chip shop, software developers, and recruiting firms. The result shows that the four-day workweek had “extensive benefits,” particularly for the well-being of the workers. Even still, just 18 of the 61 participating organizations said the shift was permanent. 56 responded that they will, at least temporarily, continue to work a four-day week.

Employers will need to see increases in productivity over a four-day workweek with full pay for this strategy to be successful across the economy. To earn enough money to cover a full week’s salary, employees will need to produce the goods and services they are making in five days within four days. For the UK economy, that rate of productivity growth has proven to be difficult. It has lagged behind many other rich countries in recent years in terms of the amount of value produced per worker.