Research shows that working fewer hours can be far more productive. Richard Godwin clocks on to find out if it’s true
have been meaning to write about the miracles of the four-day week for a while now. Ever since I started working a four-day week last August, in fact. This was prompted by a change in childcare arrangements and an upping of my wife’s work commitments. We all thought it best that I should take charge of him on Fridays.
Indeed, many see 2023 as a watershed year for the movement. Post-pandemic, many ideas about work that once seemed unthinkable are now in play. The largest-ever UK pilot scheme recently concluded: 70 companies , offered 3,300 workers a 20% reduction in hours with no reduction in pay. The full results will be published next month, but at the midway stage, 95% of companies said they had maintained or improved productivity and 88% reported they would continue after the trial.
19th century to equal pay for women, there was always some crisis, some issue, some problem. But the danger is, it’s not a reason – it’s an excuse.” Now, two parents working to an industrial work schedule is commonplace – not only commonplace, but necessary. So who does all the essential care work? “This is something that women have suffered with for a long time now,” says the author and activist Hilary Cottam, whose book,, argued for a wholesale redesign of work around our actual needs.
“It allows me a day with the kids, but it’s more stressful,” complains my friend Liz. “The work doesn’t decrease. There’s just an expectation to do five days in four.” Many of my male friends are also running into the feminist argument that childcare is still labour – it’s just unpaid. “I love being able to spend more time with my family, but looking after an attention-seeking three-year-old is more like hard work than what I get paid for the rest of the week!” says Alex.
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