The four-day week in real life: what’s genuinely working (and what nobody mentions)

The four-day week has become one of those workplace ideas that people talk about like it's a single, settled thing. It's as if there's a switch that can be flicked - and suddenly everyone has Fridays off, productivity rises and recruitment becomes effortless.

In reality, the four-day week is more like a mirror. It reflects what's already happening inside an organisation: how clear priorities are, how bloated meetings have become, how robust processes are and whether workload is genuinely manageable or just “handled” by people quietly working longer than they should.

Across the UK and Europe, there are now enough trials, pilots and lived experiences to say something useful: it can work - but it doesn't always. And when it fails, it tends to fail in predictable ways.

So, rather than selling the idea, let's look at what the evidence and examples actually show: where it's working, why it's working and where the risks might start to bite.

First, what do we mean by a "four-day week"?

It sounds obvious, but this is where most conversations go off track.

Sometimes “four-day week” means fewer hours - a model often described as 100:80:100 (100% pay, 80% time, 100% output). This is the version people usually mean when they talk about better well-being, lower burnout and improved retention. It relies on redesigning how work gets done.

Other times, it means the same hours crammed into four longer days - a compressed-hours arrangement. For some people, that's still attractive. But it's also the version most likely to create fatigue, intensify work and quietly shift pressure elsewhere.

If you're exploring this as an employer, it's worth being brutally clear about which one you mean - because the outcomes are not interchangeable.

UK examples: where it's working (and what they changed to make it work)

The UK multi-company trial: the best-known proof point - with a catch

The UK's largest four-day week pilot is frequently cited because it wasn't just one organisation telling a nice story. It included 61 companies and around 2,900 employees, across different sectors, testing a reduced-hours approach. A large proportion of participating organisations chose to continue afterwards.

But the most useful detail isn't in the headline. Here's what the successful employers actually did:

They didn't “do the same work in less time” through sheer willpower. They cut back on meetings, tightened email habits, automated routine work, protected focus time, prioritised tasks and shared workloads better. In other words, they treated the four-day week as an operational change programme, not a motivational poster.

That's why this next example matters: it suggests the four-day week can be the result of smarter work design - not a reward for working harder in a shorter timeframe.

South Cambridgeshire District Council: a real-world example under scrutiny

Public sector examples are a different kind of test. Not because public sector workers are different, but because the organisation is on display. Service delivery is measurable, visible and politically sensitive.

South Cambridgeshire District Council has become one of the most closely watched UK cases, partly because they've published information about performance and service impacts - and partly because the model has been openly challenged. That makes it useful for employers analysing from the sidelines, because it shows two truths at once:

• You can run a four-day week in a service environment if you redesign coverage and measure outcomes properly.
• Even if you do, you may still have to manage perception and scrutiny alongside the operational reality. 

If you're considering a four-day week, this is the lesson: measurement isn't optional. If you can't clearly show the impact on service and performance, the story will be written for you instead.

European examples: why the outcomes look positive (and why the detail matters)

Iceland: reduced hours at scale - and the reason it travelled

Iceland's trials are often mentioned because they tested reduced hours across a wide range of workplaces and roles and the reported outcomes include stable or improved productivity in many settings alongside stronger wellbeing. 

What's easy to miss is why it worked: it wasn't a “nice idea” that somehow paid for itself. It was backed by practical changes - trimming unnecessary meetings, improving shift planning, creating more realistic workloads and making time use more disciplined.

The broader point is important for UK employers watching from afar: Iceland's experience suggests reduced hours can work beyond a narrow band of industries - but only when the organisation makes structural changes to how work is delivered.

Portugal: a pilot that reads like a blueprint

Portugal's government-backed pilot stands out for a slightly different reason: it shows what happens when the four-day week is approached methodically, with learning and measurement built in from the start.

The messaging around results is generally positive, but the real value is that it reinforces a pattern we see repeatedly across countries: the success rate increases when organisations treat the trial as a designed programme - with clear goals, agreed metrics and active support - rather than an informal experiment.

Spain (Valencia): a reminder that the impact isn't only internal

Shorter trials like Valencia's are often discussed in terms of wellbeing and work-life balance, but they add another layer: when large groups of people change work patterns, it can ripple into commuting behaviour, stress levels and daily routines.

That's not a reason to overclaim - short pilots can't prove long-term sustainability - but it does widen the lens. A four-day week can shape employee experience in ways that show up in attendance, engagement and health markers, not just productivity dashboards.

When it doesn't work: the downsides employers often walk into

For all the success stories, there are also examples where the four-day week has created new stresses, new inequities or simply didn't work.

Here are the most common failure patterns.

The “work intensification” problem

This is the big one. It happens when leaders say “we're moving to four days” but quietly keep the same workload, the same targets, the same meeting culture and the same service expectations.

People cope at first. They skip breaks. They work faster. They log on early. They answer emails on the off day “just this once”. And then, months later, the organisation has created a system where the week feels shorter, but the pressure is higher.

One of the quickest ways to spot this is by listening to how employees talk about it:

• “I love the day off… but I'm shattered.”
• "I feel like I can't switch off on my day off."
• “I can't ever catch up.”
• “It's great, but only if you don't mind working on the off day.”

If these types of phrases appear, you don't have a four-day week. You're likely to have a five-day workload in disguise 😎.

Compressed hours: four days that feel longer, not lighter

Compressed hours can work for some - particularly where people prefer fewer commutes and are comfortable with longer days. But it also has sharper edges:

• Longer shifts can increase fatigue.

• They can make childcare more difficult.

• They can widen inequality between people who can flex their lives and those who can't.

• And in some roles, longer days can heighten safety risks.

This is why clarity matters. Calling compressed hours a “four-day week” can create mismatched expectations - especially in recruitment messaging when you're trying to attr act new talent.

Coverage and customer-facing work: the hidden cost of handover complexity

In industries that can't pause service - local government/councils, care, contact centres, retail, logistics - the four-day week isn't impossible, but it's rarely that simple.

This can mean staggered rest days, smarter rotas, tighter handovers and sometimes additional headcount. Done well, it can still improve retention and reduce absence. Done badly, it can create gaps, bottlenecks or a new kind of fragility where a service depends on a handful of people being “always available”.

In other words: in coverage environments, the business case lives or dies on operational design.

Fairness: the “two-tier workforce” risk

Even well-intentioned employers can end up with a version of the four-day week that works beautifully for office-based roles - and barely touches front-line teams.

That quickly creates resentment and can undermine the very engagement the policy was meant to create.

The fairest implementations tend to avoid blanket promises and instead focus on principles: role-by-role options, clear eligibility logic and a willingness to redesign work rather than simply announce a policy.

What can employers learn from these examples?

If you strip away the headlines, the strongest four-day week stories share a quiet commonality: they're not really about the number of days. They're about changing how work happens.

The organisations that make it work tend to:

• Redesign time stealers (meetings, approvals, duplicated admin)
• Simplify priorities (fewer “urgent” tasks competing for attention)
• Build better planning (less last-minute firefighting)
• Protect the rest day (so the off day is genuinely off)
• Measure outcomes (service, quality, retention, absence - not just sentiment)

The organisations that struggle tend to do the opposite: they announce a shorter week without changing the machinery underneath it.

This isn't a perk, it's a design choice

The four-day week can be a compelling model in the right context - especially where retention is a challenge, work is knowledge-heavy and productivity is dragged down by inefficiency rather than genuine workload.

But it's not universally “good” and it's not universally“possible”. In some environments, a different flexible working approach (compressed hours, hybrid, staggered shifts, predictable scheduling, seasonal patterns) may deliver the benefits with fewer risks.

The most sensible stance is this: treat the four-day week as a hypothesis. Pilot it. Measure it. Improve the design. And be honest about where it helps - and where it doesn't.

Because the goal isn't to have a four-day week. The goal is to build a working model that is sustainable for people, credible for customers and resilient for the organisation.