For many of us, Monday is the start of yet another dreary and long work routine. But new trial research out today might highlight a healthier approach to performing our jobs: a permanent four-day workweek.
Scientists at Boston College led the study, published Monday in Nature Human Behavior. For six months, the researchers tracked the outcomes of nearly 3,000 workers at 141 businesses after they switched to a four-day workweek with no pay reduction; they also compared them to similar workers at jobs that stuck to a typical schedule. Ultimately, they found that four-day workers reported greater job satisfaction and experienced less burnout than they did before the switch, as well as when compared to people working a five-day week. These improvements were especially apparent in people who reduced their work time by eight or more hours.
Gizmodo reached out to study authors Wen Fan and Juliet Schor to discuss the findings in depth, along with the implications they may hold for the future of work. Fan is an associate professor of sociology at Boston College, while Schor is an economist and sociologist at Boston College. The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity and grammar.
Ed Cara, Gizmodo: The concept of a four-day workweek has gotten a lot of attention lately, from both workers and scientists. What made your team interested in studying this topic?
Schor: We have long histories studying worktime and worker well-being.
I wrote a book called The Overworked American many years ago but didn’t get the opportunity to study worktime reductions (without pay cuts). Wen has a long history of studying many dimensions of workers’ health and well-being, including stress, mental health, etc. She has also studied the impact of disruptive events on health and labor market outcomes. The pandemic was one of those and has been key to creating momentum for the four-day workweek.
Fen: I just wanted to add that Juliet was incredibly generous in inviting me to collaborate on this project. Her earlier research on work hours has consistently inspired countless scholars in the field. I think the paper nicely reflects both of our research interests. It has truly been a collaborative effort between the two of us and Orla Kelly, as well as our wonderful research assistant, Guolin Gu, who has run more analyses than we can count!
Gizmodo: What were the major takeaways from this latest study?
Fen: There are two main findings in this study. First, we find that the four-day workweek improves workers’ well-being. This conclusion comes from comparing changes in four well-being indicators between trial companies and control companies. The control companies were those that initially expressed interest in participating but ultimately did not, for various reasons. We found that employees in the trial companies experienced significant reductions in burnout, along with notable improvements in job satisfaction, mental health, and physical health. In contrast, none of these changes were observed among workers in the control companies.
The second major finding is about what explains these improvements. We examined various work experiences and health behaviors. We found that three factors played particularly significant roles: work ability (a proxy for workers’ self-assessed productivity), sleep problems, and fatigue. In other words, after moving to a four-day workweek, workers saw themselves as more capable, and they experienced fewer sleep problems and lower levels of fatigue, all of which contributed to improved well-being.
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