The Idea of a 4-Day Workweek Dates Back Decades. Are We Finally Making Progress?

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Almost three months after publishing a manifesto chock-full of shiny promises, and two months after assuming leadership of the U.K.’s embattled government, Britain’s Labour party may be starting to show signs of making good on one of its most avowed pledges: to be the party for working people. 

Last week, news outlets in the U.K. reported on government plans to give workers the right to request “a four-day working week” without facing repercussions.

But those hoping the legislation might break new ground (it won’t) or be otherwise radical (it’s not) will be disappointed: For one thing, under the plan, employers would not in any way be required to grant such requests. For another, the rules are not designed to give people the opportunity to work fewer hours: Those who make a request would be asking to work the same number of hours, just compressed into fewer days.

Nevertheless, the move is noteworthy in as far as it mainstreams a necessary conversation about the ways in which the traditional parameters of the workday may no longer fit the reality of today—that is, an age in which a 9-to-5 job done only by dad, while mom stays home to raise the kids, is awkward, even impossible, for many.

It also might signal a subtle but profound shift in the dynamic between employer and employee: Where once an employer’s power over an employee’s day was largely unchallenged, now we have the worker calling at least some of the shots, provided the work gets done. And employers, eager to avoid anything resembling a great resignation, may be more willing to bend.

An Old Promise

As a concept, the four-day workweek (or indeed, a workweek that is different to the five-day-a-week-eight-hour-a-day norm that many are all-too familiar with) is not new. As far back as 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological change and improvements in productivity would make a mere 15-hour workweek feasible within a few generations.

In 1956, Richard Nixon—at the time the vice president of the U.S.—promised Americans that they would only have to work four days "in the not too distant future." But here we are, 68 years later, and despite many trials and experiments staged around the world, the parameters of the workweek in many parts of many countries’ economies feel as cemented as ever.

Look no further than post-Covid return to work mandates that have forced employees back into physical offices five days a week. Much research shows that the flexibility employers were forced to offer their workers as a result of the pandemic had no discernible negative impact on productivity. In many cases, it actually had a positive impact. And yet, like a stubborn elastic band, workplace norms are snapping back into place. 

So the news out of the U.K. (and by that we mean news in the loosest sense), though hardly grounds for celebration, provides a reason to be optimistic. Just as a fear of something unfamiliar can stymie opportunities for growth, a receptiveness to the prospect of change is so often the first step to progress. And if more employee flexibility works in the U.K., then who’s to say that a brave new world of (slightly more) flexible working can’t be replicated elsewhere?