Why the Four-Day Workweek Struggles to Gain Traction

We keep hearing that the four-day workweek is the future. So why are so few businesses actually adopting it?

Belgium, Iceland and Lithuania have passed legislation requiring the practice, and other countries in Europe are piloting the idea. Hundreds of companies in the UK have signed up to give this a try. Microsoft tested the concept in Japan. Non-profits such as the 4 Day Week Foundation and WorkFour are dedicated to expanding the concept.

Should be a winner, right? An employee works fewer hours and gets paid the same, but if they’re still getting the work done, who’s going to complain? As it turns out, lots of people. Employers in particular. And the reason is obvious: working four days but getting paid for five days doesn’t sound fair. It sounds like employers – who by their nature make countless deals every week – are getting the short end of the stick.

Just mention the phrase “four-day workweek” to a typical business owner or manager and you can expect an eye roll. It’s not hard to understand why. A four-day workweek exemplifies the complaints in today’s workplace aimed at younger generations: laziness, apathetic, disinterested, indifferent.

Whether that perception is fair or not, considering the idea invites conflict. It’s like all the other trends that employees have been inventing to avoid work.

Which is why the concept is failing. But that’s a shame, because the four-day workweek isn’t a bad concept. It just needs better branding.

Some think that, because of AI, a four-day week is inevitable. JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, says that it will “eventually reduce the workweek in the developed world”. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and other tech luminaries keep telling us that AI will bring about such productivity gains that workers may not be working at all, let alone four days in a week!

Maybe these people are right. And maybe the recent waves of corporate layoffs are just the beginning of this shift. But in my world – the world of small and mid-sized businesses – employers don’t want to cut hours and they don’t want to get rid of workers. They actually need more help getting the work done. It’s why there are still millions of job openings and it’s why small businesses repeatedly say that finding quality labor is among their top concerns. They want AI to help them get more out of their existing workers in a 40-hour week, not 32.

But if the luminaries are right and some day in the future AI creates a world where fewer workdays are needed, I bet that most employers won’t call it a four-day workweek. There’s just too much baggage around the phrase.

Maybe the solution is scrapping the name and coming up with a better term. Like a “performance pay” or “smart pay” or “results/rewards” compensation system. These are terms that are less about laziness and more about getting things done. These are terms that are more appealing to a business executive.

The irony is that the four-day week is already happening. The same employers who bristle at the idea of a shorter workweek are at the same time finding other ways to provide flexibility through remote work, compressed schedules and generous time off.

The practice is not so secretly in use already by many organizations. My daughter, a veterinarian, works three 12-hour shifts a week for full pay. Those in the healthcare field are used to 10-hour shifts, followed by multiple days off. The same for production and construction workers. Companies that offer four or five weeks (plus holidays) of paid time off a year, when you divide those days off by total working days, are effectively offering a four-day workweek. A not insignificant number of my clients offer flex time and half-days on Fridays, and close up shop on additional holidays.