From Pilot to Policy: Lessons from Four-Day Workweek Experiments

Is the four-day workweek a passing workplace perk, or the blueprint for how we will work in the future? As trials spread from startups to local governments, the question is no longer hypothetical. On September 8, Wikistrat hosted Professor Brendan Burchell, who led the UK’s groundbreaking 2022 trial, the world's largest four-day workweek experiment at the time, to share insights on what actually happens when organizations make this transition, from the psychological mechanisms that drive success to the implementation factors that determine whether companies thrive or struggle

Webinar Recording:

Brendan Burchell is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, specializing in work time reduction and the four-day work week. He led the UK’s groundbreaking 2022 trial, the world's largest four-day workweek experiment at the time. His research has been published in academic journals and featured in international media.

Key Insights

1. Work’s benefits go beyond pay. 

   Employment supports wellbeing through time structure, enforced activity, social contact, collective purpose, and status/identity, which helps explain why unemployment strongly harms mental health.

   
   

2. One day is the minimum effective dose of paid work.

   Mental-health outcomes look similar for people working one to five days per week; below one day, wellbeing drops toward unemployment levels.

   
   

3. Excessive hours backfire.

   Sustained workweeks above ~45 hours (often less for some groups) are linked to worse mental and physical health and diminished family and civic engagement.

   
   

4. Collective reduction beats solo part-time.

   When everyone reduces hours (true 20% cut, not compressed days), anxiety falls, sleep and exercise improve, and job satisfaction rises—without the pay/promotion penalties common in individual part-time arrangements.

   
   

5. Long-lasting results, not just a “honeymoon” phase.

   Most organizations in the 2022 UK cohort continued the four-day week beyond the six-month trial, with positive effects sustained over two years.

   
   

6. Performance can improve.

   At South Cambridgeshire District Council, 11 of 24 KPIs improved, about half held steady, and a few dips were attributable to external factors such as cost-of-living pressures and COVID backlogs. Recruitment strengthened, agency costs fell, and net savings emerged.

   
   

7. Success requires operational redesign, not just fewer hours.

   Success correlates with managerial redesign and frontline ownership: fewer and shorter meetings, clearer decision rights, disciplined communication, and pragmatic tech adoption. Trials that “cut hours and change nothing else” struggle.

   
   

8. Most sectors can adapt with scheduling nuance.

   White-collar settings show very high success rates, while care, retail, manufacturing, construction, and seasonal businesses benefit through rotas, rotating Mondays/Fridays off, midweek “quiet” days, or annualized hours.

   
   

9. Gender dynamics show equal gains, with system-level upside.

   Both men and women see similar wellbeing benefits from shorter weeks. As Burchell noted, “With a four-day week, we have the possibility for a new way of working for families… both parents could work a four-day week and share childcare and domestic duties more equally.” By reducing reliance on the male breadwinner/part-time mother model, this shift supports more balanced family roles and could become a significant step toward gender equality.

   
   

10. The competitive advantage of a 32-hour workweek will become industry standard.

    As adoption grows, the recruitment advantage of 4-day workweek companies will fade, and market or policy pressure will push laggards to follow. Over the next decade, the four-day week is likely to shift from a competitive perk to a mainstream expectation, though the pace may be slower in parts of Asia.