Four-day work week reduces stress and maintains productivity

Working four days a week reduces stress and maintains productivity levels, according to a report released on Tuesday by researchers at the University of Cambridge based on a pilot project involving 61 companies in the United Kingdom.

The report claims that in the six months in which these organizations cut their employees’ hours by 20%, without pay cuts, sick days would decrease by 65% ​​and employee out-migration by 57%.

Research also shows that 79% of employees said their “burnout” (exhaustion) has decreased, and 39% said their stress levels have decreased.

Companies participating in the program, promoted by the “4 Day’s a Week Campaign” (“Campaign for four days of the week,” in Portuguese), recorded revenue growth of an average of 1.4% over this period. for the same period last year, also noted in a report prepared by Cambridge sociologist Brendan Burchell.

“Before this test, many doubted that we would see an increase in productivity to compensate for the reduction in working hours, but this is exactly what we saw,” the sociologist emphasized.

“Many employees were more than willing to implement improvements on their own. Long meetings with a large number of people have been reduced or completely eliminated. Workers are much less likely to waste time,” added Brendan Burchell.

In Portugal, out of 90 companies that have expressed interest in moving to a four-day work week, about 30 have signed up to join the pilot project, Labor Minister Miguel Fontes said Feb. 15.

“Our goal was to have a number of at least 30, and we already have this number, most likely we will even overcome this threshold,” Miguel Fontes added, stressing that “many companies are still considering” this decision.

At the beginning of the month, the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, Ana Méndez Godinho, told Negócios and Antena1 that companies interested in joining the four-day workweek project come from various sectors, especially industry, trade, information and communications. , with geographic diversity and varying sizes.

The pilot program consists of evaluating the introduction of a four-day work week with a corresponding reduction in working hours without pay cuts and is intended for employers and their employees who voluntarily wish to join.

Organizations participating in the pilot program are assessed before, during and after the program using indicators related to the company, namely productivity and intermediate costs, and to workers, including health and well-being, using a methodology to be determined by the coordinating team.

Four-day week pilot project coordinator Pedro Gomez, Birkbeck Professor at the University of London, argued in late October that four-day week implementation was “a very long way off.” in Portugal, but that “this is the first step on a journey that will take many years.”