UK is Changing the 40-hour Work Week

100 UK companies have decided to experiment with reducing the 5-day 40-hour work week to a 4-day 32-hour work week. We are curious to see what becomes of this plan. The key here is that these companies are proposing a 4-day work week with reduced hours without reducing their workers' pay. If you're a salaried employee this might be good news, while if you're hourly, well, the time will have to be made up or the 5-day work week will have to be resumed.

What is the advantage to a 4 vs a 5-day work week? In theory, employees get more personal time - an extra "weekend day" to do what they need or want to do without taking vacation. In theory, more personal time makes for happier employees who are more productive and more willing to work for a company because the company cares about their wellbeing. Less working hours could potentially mean less stress, heightened employee morale, and an increase in business creativity.

Have any companies or countries attempted something like this before? In short, sort of. Sweden gave a 30 (ish) hour work week a try while keeping the 5-day work week structure and saw a reduction in productivity. Granted, again, it wasn't a 4-day work week and in addition, this was given a 24-month trial. It is not clear what the data points were and how productivity was measured. Will this make a difference in the quality of life for their employees? Will work still get done at an acceptable rate? Will the pros outweigh the cons? These are questions that will only be answered once the 4-day work week commences, and the workers/companies have tried it. If the results are positive, there is a good chance that other companies will try to adopt this model as well.

In case you were curious about the origin of the 5-day work week, we did some research on that too. Unsurprisingly, it seems to have originated in the U.S dating as far back as 1866. Of course, there was some anger and protests along the way as changes were made, but the first successful implementation of the 8-hour workday was under President Grant in 1869 where he declared the 8-hour workday for government workers and urged the private sector to do the same. The private sector did not make that change, so of course there was more unrest and protesting. Then, in 1890, the U.S. government began to track how long workers were working and they found that on average, a worker’s week was around 100 hours. Given that context, it's not surprising that there was some unrest about the amount of time spent working. Between 1890 and 1940 some other movements with certain companies and industries adapting a 40-hour work week. Most significantly, in 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed and established a 44-hour work week. It was then amended in 1940 to lower that 44 to 40 hours. It is recognized that not all of the time workers log is spent being productive even at 40 hours, so it will be interesting to see what happens at 32. We will be watching the progress of the 4-day 32-hour work week in the UK and see what difference it makes if any.

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