The four-day workweek has gained rapid momentum in recent years.The number of companies experimenting with variations of a flexible workweek is on the rise.Researchers predict shorter weeks could be normalized in the next five to 10 years.
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The much-coveted four-day workweek is back in the news this month after Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced new legislation and held a congressional hearing calling for a 32-hour national workweek.The concept has gained momentum in recent years, spurred on by a post-pandemic society grappling with its toxic relationship with work. Calls for a shorter workweek aren’t new by any means — former US President Richard Nixon was an advocate at one point — but past attempts to implement it have failed.This time, however, may be different. Researchers who study and advocate for the four-day workweek say the world is on the precipice of seeing flexible schedules normalized in the next five to 10 years.Much of the early, knee-jerk resistance by CEOs and work devotees has softened in recent years and transformed from outright objection to cautious curiosity about how a shorter workweek might function in practice.”We’re haggling over logistics rather than debating philosophy,” Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, the author of “Work Less Do More: Designing the Four Day Week,” told Business Insider. “When you get to that stage you haven’t won completely, but you’re now on grounds where a four-day week can be taken seriously.”A brief history of the four-day workweekThe push for a four-day workweek first materialized in the 1960s and early 1970s, said Pang, who serves as director of research at 4-day Week Global, a nonprofit organization that helps facilitate large-scale trials of shorter workweeks around the world.Most of the early experiments were done in the manufacturing industry to cut costs by decreasing factory operating hours. But those efforts were eventually killed off by the oil crisis and subsequent economic downturn, as well as growing resistance from labor unions who were concerned about longer days, according to Pang.The push for shorter workweeks went largely dormant until around 2016 and 2017, when the movement once again started gaining steam, spurred on by younger generations in the workforce.”You’ve got millennials reaching their 30s by this point, and they don’t want to do this the way their parents did,” Pang said. “They have a sense that there’s an opportunity to fix what’s broken.”The buzz around a shorter workweek became a certified boom with the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift to remote work forced people to start thinking about a future of work that might look different than the past, Pang said.That shifting worldview is what inspired Phil McParlane, a developer in Scotland, to start 4dayweek.io, a job board exclusively for positions with flexible schedules, in 2020, he told BI. The site advertises open roles with shorter schedules worldwide and promotes many of the study-proven benefits of a shorter workweek, which include increased productivity, reduced costs, increased employee retention, and a reduction in the gender pay gap.”When remote work became normalized, people started to question everything about the 9-to-5 schedule,” McParlane said.The four-day workweek has, in many ways, become shorthand for any shorter workweek, encompassing a wide variety of flexible schedules.
Remote work policies have prompted people to reconsider their relationship with the traditional nine-to-five schedule.
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The four-day week is already underwayThe number of companies experimenting with variations of a flexible workweek has been on the rise in recent years, Pang said. Some employers nix Fridays, others work five six-hour days, and others still enjoy a four-and-a-half-day week.Pang has worked with more than 300 companies in his time at 4-day Week Global and interviewed another hundred for his book, he said. Meanwhile, McParlane’s job board has exploded in popularity since he started it in 2020. Three hundred companies currently have profiles on the site, which garners up to 200,000 job seekers each month, he told BI.
Some of the biggest companies that have piloted shorter workweeks include Kickstarter, Panasonic, and Awin.Flexible workweeks are increasingly a signifier to prospective employees that a company is a desirable place to work, McParlane said.Attracting top-tier employees is just one reason Dimitri Cavathas, CEO of Lower Shore Clinic, started considering a four-day workweek for his company. The Maryland healthcare organization serves about 2,000 people throughout rural counties in the state, providing services ranging from primary care to outpatient mental health services.Cavathas, whose family is from Greece, said he was inspired by the European approach to work and had been dreaming of a shorter week for years when he decided to start researching what it might look like for his company.”The rule here is if I want something, everyone gets it,” Cavathas said. “And since I wanted a four-day workweek, we all got it.”He first introduced the idea to his 170 employees about two years ago and was surprised when many initially reacted with doubt and cynicism. People were concerned about not having enough time to get their work done, as well as switching from eight to nine-hour days, Cavathas said.Pushback is to be expected, especially in America’s work-devoted culture, according to Pang. But there is a recent demand for a healthier work-life balance.Cavathas’ employees warmed to the idea after having time to ask questions and learn more about the implementation, he said. The clinic launched its new schedule in January of this year and Cavathas said the results have been overwhelmingly positive.The company met its quarter-one budget, and only one department saw a revenue drop, which Cavathas said they had anticipated. But more importantly, staff engagement is up, and people are celebrating having more freedom in their personal lives, he said.”Some people feel like it’s a vacation almost every weekend,” Cavathas said.The Maryland clinic operates with two staff cohorts: one group works four nine-hour days Monday through Thursday, while a second cohort works three ten-hour days Friday through Sunday. Everyone makes a full salary, regardless of their schedule.Cavathas said he hopes other business leaders will follow his lead. And Pang thinks they would be wise to do so.”It’s a matter of having a visionary CEO who wants their legacy to be not a slightly better stock price for the fourth quarter of 2025, but actually solving some of the enduring structural challenges around inequality, gender disparities, and problems with career advancement that have plagued companies for decades,” Pang said.
The United Auto Workers pushed for a shorter workweek in recent negotiations.
AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File
The future of the four-day workweek is brightThe United Auto Workers — the largest labor union in the country — pushed for a shorter week in recent negotiations. The union acknowledged the request was a long shot but isn’t giving up and expects to raise the issue again in the future.Meanwhile, arguments for why a four-day week doesn’t work are weakening significantly as more and more studies come back singing its praises. Lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation posing four-day workweek trials or research programs, including California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Hawaii, though none have passed yet.Cavathas said he recently spoke with Maryland legislators as part of his work with Work Four, a US-based nonprofit advocating for the shorter week.Within the next five years, Pang predicts at least one Fortune 500 company in every sector will be experimenting with a shorter workweek. By 2029, several states will likely also be in the process of trialing flexible workweeks, he said.”It’s definitely going to become the standard,” McParlane said. “I am absolutely certain we will see it in this current generation.”People who work four days a week ultimately get one year of their life back over the course of five years, Pang said. His ultimate goal is to win back a million years of people’s free time.”Whether that’s in one company with a million people or 100,000 companies with 10 people, if I can get to a million years of free time, I will consider that a huge win,” he said.
