UK firms move to four day working week with employees on FULL pay in trial hailed as ‘bold new way of working in 2022’

BRITISH firms are trialling a move to a four day working week with employees still earning FULL pay.

Several countries have successfully trialled a four-day system in the last six years, and now the UK is giving it a go.

More than 30 companies will take part in the “bold new way of working in 2022”, researchers say.

New research shows 78 per cent of employees with four day working weeks reported being happier and less stressed.

The six-month trial will test whether workers can operate at 100 per cent productivity for 80 per cent of the time.

And Employees will be paid the same amount as if they were working five days a week.

The pilot is being led by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with the think tank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign and researchers at Oxford University, Boston College, and Cambridge University.

Joe O’Connor, pilot programme manager for 4 Day Week Global, said: “More and more businesses are moving to productivity focused strategies to enable them to reduce worker hours without reducing pay.

“We are excited by the growing momentum and interest in our pilot program and in the four-day week more broadly.

“The four-day week challenges the current model of work and helps companies move away from simply measuring how long people are “at work”, to a sharper focus on the output being produced. 2022 will be the year that heralds in this bold new future of work.”

Many have pointed to the "overwhelming success" of the biggest ever four-day workweek trial in Iceland in 2015 to 2019.

Workers were found to be less stressed and had a better work-life balance while employers saw no drastic fall in productivity or provision of services, analysis found.

The experiment initially included just a few dozen public sector workers who were members of unions.

But it expanded to 2,500 workers from both the public and private sector – representing one per cent of the country’s workforce - as the trial progressed.

Cops, healthcare workers, teachers, shop assistants and council workers were among those taking part in the trials.

The triumph of the trial, as well as similar pilots in New Zealand and Spain, led people to push for it in Britain.