Four-day working week may boost our health and performance at work
Employees who trialled a four-day work week for six months said they slept better and felt that their ability to work improved
By Elizabeth Hlavinka
21 July 2025
One fewer commuting day may be part of the appeal for some workers
2024 Getty Images
Working four days a week without a reduction in salary seems to boost employees’ health and job satisfaction – and may even help them perform better at work.
The covid-19 pandemic changed how many people work. Alongside a shift to at-home or hybrid home-office working for some occupations, certain companies have gone down to a four-day working week without cutting pay.
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To better understand the effects of this, Wen Fan at Boston College, Massachusetts, and her colleagues analysed data from 141 companies in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland that participated in a pilot programme led by the non-profit firm 4 Day Week Global.
Before the trial, the companies spent two months working with outside advisors to reorganise their workflow and cut inefficiencies, like unnecessary meetings.
After the programme, which lasted six months, Fan and the team compared self-reported measures of productivity, health and job satisfaction from nearly 3000 employees at these companies against workers at 12 firms that considered participating in the pilot but then decided against it.
