Work 4 days a week, with more time to pursue their hobbies and indulge in family, friends and physical activity. Even if there are now many Villages and companies around the world that are trying to experiment the shortest working hours (last the Japanese Panasonic), what is going to start in United Kingdom is the largest experiment ever made to actually understand if the reduction of working hours it does not lead to a decrease in productivity and, on the contrary, it helps the concentration and yield of employees. The initiative is managed by the non-profit organization 4 Day Week Global together with other organizations and is supervised by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge e Oxford and Boston College.
Over 3,300 employees will be involved
They are more than 70 UK companies who have decided to experiment with the working week 4 days, giving the opportunity to a total of 3,300 employees.
The results of the experiment will be evaluated in real time by the researchers of the British Universities involved in the project who “will analyze how employees respond to daily stresses in terms of stress, burnout, satisfaction at work and in private life having one more day off “.
Recent experiments on the short workweek
That of the United Kingdom some time follows a recent experiment on the short work week that took place in Iceland and involved 2,500 employees from various productive activities on the island.
The workers, in this case, could choose to work one day less or to decrease the hours of activities per week to 35.
I researchers who analyzed the results of this experiment found that reduce working hours of staff offered numerous benefits to employees, while not leading to declines in productivity.
In Europe I am Finland, Scotland and Iceland to be the first to experience short week. In these countries, governments are adopting policies for reduction of working hoursallocating funds and encouraging companies with incentives.
In Italy only very few companies they decided to try to reduce the weekly working days. One of these is the multinational Mondelez Internationalwhich launched in March 2022 the ‘Workplace of the Future’ initiative for employees of the offices of Milanogiving them a chance to distribute the hours per week of activity over 4.5 working days.