The four-day week, a good idea? It is to this oh so sensitive question that a giant experiment conducted by the think tank Autonomy for six months in Great Britain attempted to answer. In 61 companies in the country, from different sectors, 2,200 employees went through it, without any loss of salary, for a period of six months, from June to December. The results of this experiment, rich in lessons, were published Tuesday in a document of about sixty pages. Here are the main points to remember.
What is the context of this study? The experiment carried out in Great Britain is part of the context of the “Great resignation” and greater attention paid by employees to their working conditions after Covid-19, even if it means putting their resignation in the balance. . “The four-day week can respond to a social demand, with the possibility left to workers to take more care of their families, their children, to improve their health”, explains Anne-Laure Le Guern, lecturer at Caen-Normandy University. And the work analysis specialist points out that the device can be a “marketing argument” for companies that have difficulty recruiting.
A differentiated set-up. The “four-day week” was not introduced everywhere in the same way in the companies taking part in the experiment. Each was free to choose a model: that of simply closing one day in the week (most often Friday); to set up a rotation between the employees; to work one day less different according to the services; to smooth the number of hours worked per week on average over a year to 32, without the weeks being necessarily four days. In the end, experience shows that weekly working time finally fell on average “only” by four hours and not a whole day because “people were still working on the day not worked”.
A rising turnover
What results in companies? It is difficult to measure the impact for a company of such a change, especially since it will be necessary to see over time, once the experiment is over, what the real effect is. Autonomy has therefore applied itself to looking at the turnover: this increases on average, for each company, by 1.4% over the six months of the experiment; it is even up by 34.5% compared to the same period in previous years. A result to be taken with tweezers, however, for lack of information on the profile and activity of the companies concerned by the experiment. Despite a “stable” work intensity, 55% of employees noted an improvement in their work capacity.
Happier employees at work… The figures are again eloquent. Employees were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (“never”) to 5 (“all the time”) different feelings: stress at work went from 3.07 to 2.74, burn-out (a criterion combining fatigue, exhaustion and frustration, etc.) from 2.8 to 2.34. With the four-day week, employees rate their job satisfaction at 7.69 out of 10, compared to 7.12 at the start of the experiment. This is confirmed at the HR level: the number of resigning employees fell over the duration of the experiment, as did absenteeism (from 2 to 0.7 days per month and per employee). “Work is not just working time and that should not erase other requests from employees”, notes Anne-Laure Le Guern, however.
… and at home. Participating employees were also asked to self-assess several criteria concerning their health outside of work, from 1 (“poor”) to 5 (“excellent”). They note an improvement in mental health (from 2.95 to 3.32) and more “positive” emotions (from 3.13 to 3.58). Experiences of anxiety and fatigue throughout the week also decrease when employees work four days a week instead of five. 40% of employees say they had less difficulty sleeping during the experience (45% noted no change).
More free time to take care of yourself
More free time. The study logically shows that employees have more time for themselves and for their loved ones. On a scale of 1 (“very difficult”) to 5 (“very easy”), the balance between social life and work is evaluated at 3.78 at the end of the six months, against 2.9 at the beginning. There is also less frustration: the number of employees frustrated at not having enough time for their hobbies has fallen by 33%, by 27% to take care of their children and grandchildren, or by 21% to take care of an elderly parent. Employees are also more satisfied with their own life at the end of the experiment (7.56 out of 10 against 6.69 at the start).
Companies that sue. Of the 61 companies that experimented with the four-day week, 56 decided to continue the movement (92%). 18 of them have even decided to go there permanently. 2 companies have decided to continue the trial, 3 have decided to put an end to it “for the moment”. On the side of employees: 90% said at the end of the six-month trial that they wanted to continue. 15% of them even said they would be able to refuse to go back to the five-day week in the future… whatever the salary increase they were offered.