Staff at 30 UK firms will work a four-day week for SAME salary as six-month pilot begins TODAY

Workers working at greater than 30 companies throughout the UK will work four-day weeks over the following six months for a similar wage, as an experimental pilot will get underway.

Campaigners calling for a discount within the variety of working days have stated it should create a greater work-life stability however critics have warned it should result in extra stress as workers try to squeeze extra work into fewer hours.

The trial, led by 4 Day Week World, will see workers members from 36 separate organisations finishing the identical quantity of labor, and as much as 35 hours every week, however cut up over 4 days somewhat than 5.

Whereas lockdowns have made numerous workers reevaluate the tough work-life stability, a proposed four-day working week has been designed to supply workers versatile hours and improve productiveness throughout working hours.

Joe O’Connor, pilot programme supervisor for 4 Day Week World, stated the idea will ‘herald in a daring new future of labor’ throughout 2022.

Corporations participating within the trial embody Massive Potato Video games, a board sport firm based mostly in East London, Blink, a digital advertising and marketing company in Norwich, and Charlton Morris, a specialist search agency.

Morrisons and Unilever are are reportedly contemplating switching to a four-day week, whereas the British arm of digital camera firm Canon is to participate in a six month trial run by lecturers on the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, studies the Guardian. 

Finance agency Atom Financial institution has already made the shift to the shorter working week. 

Comparable experiments are as a result of be held within the USA, Canada, Eire, Australia and New Zealand, whereas trials are already being carried out in Spain and Scotland.

Researchers have been arguing that advantages to a four-day week would additionally see workers return a extra environment friendly work efficiency for his or her employers. 

A number of influencer businesses are already working a four-day working week, together with Have interaction Hub, whose workers can have both a Wednesday or a Friday off, rotating each eight weeks.

In advertising and marketing, the place jobs typically provide larger salaries, staff cope with heavy workloads and competitors, with many individuals working as much as 60 hours every week. 

Sam O’Brien, Chief Advertising Officer at efficiency advertising and marketing platform Affise, stated: ‘These working in advertising and marketing can have the stress of opponents and retaining updated with the digital world, which has not been straightforward in the course of the course of the pandemic.

‘The consequences of the previous two years have resulted in lots of further hours spent remoted, at dwelling, and laptop screens whereas sitting in uncomfortable chairs- extraordinarily dangerous for each your psychological well being, imaginative and prescient and posture.’

Through the pandemic, it was believed that introducing a four-day working week would enhance excessive avenue gross sales by an estimated £58billion, in response to Affise.

It is because three-day weekends would give consumers 20 per cent extra time to purchase, and see an anticipated spending improve associated to hobbies, gardening and DIY.

Mr O’Brien added: ‘Beginning a enterprise takes plenty of time, vitality, cash, and creativity, and choosing a four-day week is a technique many companies select to scale back bills.’

In August 2019, Microsoft Japan applied a four-day week giving their 2,300 workers 5 Fridays off in a row.

The corporate stated productiveness jumped 40 per cent, conferences had been extra environment friendly, and staff – who had been additionally happier – took much less day off.

9 out of ten workers on the firm stated they most popular the shorter working week and different advantages, together with a 23 per cent discount in weekly electrical energy use, and a 59 per cent lower within the variety of pages printed by workers, which had been additionally welcomed by employers. 

Mr O’Connor stated: ‘Increasingly more companies are transferring to productiveness targeted methods to allow them to scale back employee hours with out decreasing pay.

‘We’re excited by the rising momentum and curiosity in our pilot program and within the four-day week extra broadly.

‘The four-day week challenges the present mannequin of labor and helps firms transfer away from merely measuring how lengthy persons are “at work”, to a sharper give attention to the output being produced. 2022 would be the 12 months that heralds on this daring new future of labor.’ 

In Iceland, a 4 day working week trial was carried out between 2015 and 2019 and labelled an ‘overwhelming success’ by researchers.

Workplaces that took half, together with at Reykjavík Metropolis Council which ran the trial, moved from 40 hour weeks to 36 or 35 hours with some reporting an improved degree of productiveness amongst workers.

The trial finally concerned greater than 2,500 staff, equal to roughly 1 per cent of Iceland’s workforce. 

The workplaces included preschools, workplaces, hospitals and social service suppliers.

Will Stronge, director of analysis at Autonomy, stated: ‘This examine reveals that the world’s largest ever trial of a shorter working week within the public sector was by all measures an amazing success.

‘It reveals that the general public sector is ripe for being a pioneer of shorter working weeks – and classes may be realized for different governments.’

Whereas campaigners have been pushing for a four-day working week, critics have argued it might create higher stress for staff who can be trying to squeeze as a lot or extra work into fewer hours.

Some say the idea can be not possible in buyer going through jobs, or 24/7 operations together with the NHS or emergency providers the place extra time funds would current an additional price to employers or the taxpayer.

A trial of the four-day working week in France, for instance, discovered staff had been placing in the identical quantity of hours even with a day fewer and firms had been having to pay them for his or her further time. 

Supply: Mail On-line