Four-day workweek

What It Means

A four-day workweek means working four days instead of five, and people use the name for two different setups. (1) A compressed scheduleCompressed workweekA full-time schedule that fits the usual hours into fewer, longer days, such as four 10-hour days a week instead of five 8-hour days. See more fits the usual 40 hours into four 1010,000 stepsA popular daily step goal that began as the name of a 1960s Japanese pedometer; later studies find health benefits begin well below it. See more-hour days, which the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) calls a 4/10 schedule for federal employees. (2) A reduced-hours week keeps full pay while cutting working time to about 80% of the usual, such as 32 hours instead of 40, the model promoted by the organization 4 Day Week Global.

How People Say It at Work

• "We're piloting a four-day week through the summer."
• "Is it four tens, or a real 32-hour week?"
• "Nobody books meetings on Fridays anymore."

The Breakdown

How to propose a four-day week for a team (Buhata's suggestion)

1. Decide which kind you mean: the same 40 hours in four days, or fewer hours at the same pay.
2. List what has to keep running five days a week, such as customer calls, and plan who covers the fifth day.
3. Choose a few measures before you start, such as output, response times and how people feel, so the result isn't judged on impressions.
4. Run a set trial period with a review date.
5. Write down what changes after the review, including anything you drop.

Try it today. Write the one thing your team must deliver every Friday, and name who would cover it if your week ended on Thursday.

What the trials measured. 4 Day Week Global reports that its UK trial ran for six months with over 60 companies and almost 3,000 workers, with no loss of pay, and that the number of staff leaving the participating companies fell 57%. These results come from companies that took part and from the organization that runs the trials, so they don't show that every workplace would get the same result.

Where It Comes From

4 Day Week Global says the 100:80:100 model, 100% of the pay for 80% of the time with 100% of the output, was created in 2018 by its founders Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart during a trial at Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand.

Good to Know

On a 4/10 schedule you still work 40 hours. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime is owed to covered nonexempt workers for hours over 40 in a workweek, so four 10-hour days don't trigger federal overtime on their own. Some states have their own overtime laws, and the higher standard applies, so check with your state labor department. For federal employees, OPM requires a compressed schedule to be negotiated with the union, or approved by a majority vote of affected employees outside a bargaining unit, before it starts.

Related Terms and Categories

• Compressed workweek

  A full-time schedule that fits the usual hours into fewer, longer days, such as four 10-hour days a week instead of five 8-hour days.

• Flextime

  A work schedule that lets employees pick their start and finish times within limits, as long as they work the required hours and are there for core hours.

• Work-life balance

  How your time and energy divide between paid work and the rest of your life, such as family, rest, health and interests.

• Burnout at work

  Exhaustion, cynicism about your job and a drop in how effective you feel, which WHO links to chronic workplace stress that hasn't been managed.

• Deep work

  Focused, distraction-free time spent on a mentally demanding task, a term from author Cal Newport's 2016 book Deep Work.

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