The four-day workweek has got a shot in the arm with the latest study finding numerous benefits to the work pattern.
The 61-company U.K. trial was organized by the nonprofit 4 Day Week Global, and the results published Tuesday said the arrangement benefits both employer and the employee.
In the trial, 2,900 workers reported lower levels of stress, anxiety, burnout, fatigue, and sleep issues, as well as improved work-life balance. Moreover, revenue remained more or less the same for the 47 companies that reported financial data.
The results are not surprising, according to Philip Gehrman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
“As much as work can be rewarding and fulfilling, it’s also stressful and takes time that we’d like to spend doing other things. So it just seems logical to me that working fewer hours would be associated with a range of improvements,” Gehrman told BusinessInsider.
It should be noted the trial did have its limitations. First, there was no control group in the trial. Meaning, there was no company or companies that followed a five-day workweek to compare against the four-day workweek companies.
Second, the participating companies were allowed flexibility in deciding the schedule, and there was no common work pattern. For instance, employers could leave out Fridays, allow shorter working hours over a five-day workweek, or make the four-day week dependent on meeting performance goals.
Shorter workweeks can lead to tighter deadlines, which may not be a bad thing, according to Alex Korb, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It helps us focus our energy and our efforts,” he told Insider. “If I said you had some big project that was really difficult to do, and I didn’t give you a deadline, well then it would probably take a really long time, and you might not make much progress at all.”
There is research that shows that people tend to increase their effort as a deadline nears, which works in favor of…
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