The program aims to measure the impact of a four-day week on the productivity and well-being of employees.

As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly shifts work, the largest experimental four-day week event in the world to date is set to launch in the UK, reports the Guardian.

Over 3,000 employees from 60 different companies will participate in the project from June to December, under the supervision of researchers from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as Boston College in the United States. It aims to measure the impact of this new organization on the productivity and well-being of the employees concerned.

Promising results in Iceland

The large-scale trial will be coordinated by 4-Day Week Global, a non-profit organization that advocates normalization of the four-day week. According to him, this method of organization in the company makes it possible to reduce the number of sick leaves, increase productivity and attract young talent who aspire to a better quality of life at work.

At the Royal Society of Biology, the professional association that will participate in the programme, “staff have responded positively to participation in the pilot project”, assured its director Mark Downs. In addition, its campus will be open five days a week while the staff will work from Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday.

This British experiment is inspired by the work done in Iceland. There, a similar trial involving 2,500 employees was conducted between 2015 and 2019 to try to measure the impact of a four-day week. The results were conclusive: employee productivity increased and their well-being improved. In France, some companies such as LDLC have already taken advantage of this, but this phenomenon is still far from being normalized.