Mythbusting the Four-Day Work Week

The challenge

For many, the four-day work week is seen as easy to implement – a long weekend every weekend, what could there possibly be to complain about? Exploring this future work scenario, this research aims to uncover whether the four-day work week improves employee wellbeing and delivers business outcomes (and whether these benefits are equitable).

This project emerged from Unilever New Zealand (as part of Unilever ANZ) as they looked to fundamentally change how employees work: focusing on outcomes and productivity as opposed to time in the office. A trial of the 100-80-100 four-day work week was implemented – a model specifying that 100% of work is completed in 80% of the time, whilst maintaining 100% pay. This model is opposed to the traditional compressed four-day work week: that is working the same number of hours in less days.

Solution

In 2021 UTS was engaged by Unilever NZ as an independent partner to assess their four-day work week trial. In consultation with Unilever, the UTS team developed a rigorous mixed methodology research design – implemented in three phases. Over the 18-month trial this included three online surveys of all employees (n=78) and 57 in-depth semi-structured interviews. To ensure the integrity and autonomy of the research process, Unilever's participation was carefully curated, involving periodic check-ins after each phase of the research.

Outcome and impact

For Unilever NZ, the four-day work week trail achieved strong business results – exceeding all business key performance indicators (including sales, market share, profit and overheads). Absenteeism was also significantly reduced, turnover was stable, and all other employee outcome metrics were stable or showed directional improvement. This success can be largely attributed to management support and the willingness of all staff members to strive to work differently and change ways of working.

Implementation of the four-day work week was far from offering everyone a long weekend, with Unilever NZ employees opting to take the time out at different points throughout the week or when they could. Key challenges which impacted one’s ability to take a four-day week included differences by role type, managing workload spikes and stakeholders. The research also showed that scheduling of time out was an important factor.

Ultimately, the four-day work week has the potential for far reaching positive social impact: from increased female participation in the workforce and greater equity in caring responsibilities – to enhanced community connections and positive steps towards breaking down flexibility bias.

I think one of the key misconceptions about the four-day work week is that it's a compressed work week. The four-day work week actually represents a 20% reduction in time at work, whereas a compressed work week is actually just fitting the same amount of hours in four days.

Unilever were interested in trialling this new four-day work week which is called the 80 /100 model and that means to deliver 100% of business outcomes in 80% of the time but you retain 100% of your pay.

Rather than a 25% pay rise, a four-day work week has proved incredibly attractive to the high achievers in the labour market. The four-day workweek has led to reduced absenteeism, greater worker engagement, improved work-life balance, improved employee well being, but critically, all the business outcomes, the profit targets, the sales targets, were exceeded.

It was helping address gender inequity in the workplace. So women were able to return to work sooner because it made it easier to secure childcare arrangements for example. Women were also able to take up more senior roles that they wouldn't have previously had access to because they were part-time.

Really the next step for the four-day workweek research is to create the evidence base that is adopted by policymakers, progressive political parties, unions, employers, to actually push for the four-day workweek and other improvements to be legislated as a workplace right. To date, most of the research has just been done in white collar situations. So that's something that we're really mindful of as we contribute to the policy agenda moving forward.