Last week the University of Cambridge published an article that contains the results of the world’s largest trial of the four-day working week. 61 organizations in the United Kingdom implemented shorter business weeks for all their employees without decreasing their salaries. The campaign was organized by 4 Day Week Global and the British organization 4 Day Week Campaign and was held from June to December 2022. Only in the United Kingdom, the companies that participated had around 2900 employees and worked in different fields, such as online retail and eCommerce, IT, consultancy, recruitment, marketing, financial services, and much more.
The results of the trial were astonishing.
- 71% of employees reported a decrease of “burnout”;
- the number of sick days decreased by 65%;
- about 60% of workers noticed an increased ability to combine their work with care responsibilities and social life;
- staff turnover rate was 57% less compared to the values reported a year before;
- 39% of workers mentioned lesser stress levels.
One of the essential points of this research was to keep salary levels. One of the fears was that because business week lasted only 32 hours, the company revenue may decrease. But, according to the reports submitted by 23 organizations, there even was a slight growth - 1.4% on average. The result is even more surprising, considering the general worldwide economy decrease.
So, according to the results, 56 of the British companies (92%) intend to continue their participation, and 18 of them confirmed that it would be a permanent change to their schedule.
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