Working five days a week and then enjoying the weekend. But returning to the same old world of work the next week. What happens when you don’t have to do this. An important study published in a journal called Nature Human Behavior says that reducing the working week to four days has shown a significant improvement in people’s health. This has also increased people’s happiness.
Researchers from Boston College studied aspects such as burnout, job satisfaction, physical and mental health among employees of 141 companies in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. Lead author of this research, Wen Fan, told BBC, “We saw improvement in employees. Both the production and revenue of the companies increased. This trial is now over. But 90 percent of the companies involved in it decided to continue working four days a week.”
Earlier also research has been done on the effect of fewer working days on employees. The research of Boston College also confirmed the same earlier results, which said that working fewer days a week improved the employees. Fewer working days lead to better health, balanced life and overall more satisfaction. According to a recent study, working for long hours can change the structure of the brain. So if there are so many benefits of fewer working days, then who has stopped us from working less in a week.
Culture of working more
China is known for its ‘996’ work culture. Under this, employees work six days a week from 9 am to 9 pm. India’s rapidly growing technology and finance sector also Employees often face pressure to work long and irregular hours to meet global demands. In countries like China, India, the US and the UK, long working hours are considered a mark of pride, says Professor Wen Fan.
She says, “In Japan, unpaid overtime is so common that there is a special word for ‘death by work’ – karoshi.” Professor Fan says, “In Japan, work is not just work. It is almost like a social ritual.” Japan’s labor market and work culture expert Hiroshi Ono says, “People reach the office early and stay late. Even if there is no work, people stay in the office for a long time to show commitment. It is like a performing art in a way. Just like there is a set method in martial arts, this is the same.”
She says, “Japan’s collective culture encourages this. There is a lot of bad reputation here about ‘free riders’. If a person starts taking Friday off, others think, ‘Why is he getting rid of work today?’” Surprisingly, people in Japan often do not even use the legally available facilities. Often people do not even take paternity leave.
“Men can take up to a year’s leave, but very few do so. They do not want to inconvenience their colleagues.” Still, Professor Wen Fan believes that the trials she has conducted have started to show change even in countries with traditional thinking about work. In Iceland, about 90 percent of people now work fewer hours. They have the right to shorten their working week. Such trials have been conducted in many countries like South Africa, Brazil, France, Spain, Dominican Republic and Botswana.
Earlier this year, Tokyo started a trial of a four-day week for government employees. Dubai also recently started a similar program for government employees under the ‘Summer Initiative’. South Korea will trial a four-and-a-half-day working week in 67 companies from October 2025.
No coordination between work and life
Karen Lowe, CEO of Four Day Week Global, says, “Since Covid, more and more people feel that their work and life are not in sync. Now this trend cannot be reversed.” Her organization helps companies around the world, from Brazil to Namibia and Germany, to trial the four-day work model. One of their biggest success stories is the police department of the ‘City of Golden’ in Colorado state of America, which has 250 employees.
After implementing the four-day working week, overtime work has reduced by about 80 percent and the number of resignations has reduced by half. “If this model can work in a police department where officers patrol and respond to emergencies, it can work anywhere,” Lowe says. “When we started the first trial in 2019, only a few companies were interested. Now the number of companies interested in it is in the thousands. The benefits of a shorter working week are well-documented. What’s missing is understanding,” she says.
Lowe says a common misconception is that a shorter working week reduces productivity. But she says it has often been the opposite. In 2019, Microsoft Japan trialed a four-day working week and saw a 40 percent increase in sales per employee compared to the previous year. However, the company did not implement the change permanently.
Lowe says this change is more complex for large companies, because they have many departments and employees work in different countries and time zones. In Professor Fan’s study, productivity remained intact because companies reduced low-value work. Unnecessary meetings were replaced by phone calls or messages. Lowe says, “Another misconception is that if the working week is shortened, employees will have to work harder to compensate for less work.” She says, “It’s not a matter of getting five days of work done in four days. But it’s about reducing waste. Now that AI is doing many tasks, we can identify these inefficient processes more easily.”
An experiment that worked
For Charles Davids, director of the Counseling Center at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, the four-day working week was not just a change in the working structure, but a lifeline. His team provides mental health support services to more than 30,000 students. Before the change, people were suffering from burnout.
He says, “Cases of absenteeism were very high. People were constantly taking leave by reporting sick. This was not happening due to laziness. They were in survival mode. Their energy was completely drained. South Africa is the country with the highest number of people with mental problems. Charles’s team of 56 people was mentally exhausted due to constantly dealing with trauma, excessive workload and limited resources.
Despite opposition from senior leaders and doubts from his team, he started a pilot project of a four-day working week. “They thought it would never work. But it did work. The results were amazing,” he says. Before the trial, the team took 51 days off work due to illness in the year. But the four-day working week reduced that to just four.
Staff reported getting better sleep, more exercise and the opportunity to pursue hobbies. “They spent weekends with family instead of doing household chores,” he says. “I thought most people would make more money by putting in extra time in private practice. But only one person did,” says Charles. Charles believes the improved health of staff has made them more efficient at their jobs. He says, “Their focus on work has increased. They have also become more sensitive towards it. Students have started getting better care.
The same formula cannot work everywhere
Professor Wen Fan says, “Still, such a change is not possible everywhere. The industrial structure of a country and its level of development matters in this,” Karen Lowe says, “Many people in Africa work in agriculture, mining or informal sectors. They are still far away from the discussion of issues like flexibility in wage work.” Restructuring of low-skill, physically demanding work is difficult. In these sectors, employers focus on making as much profit as possible rather than rescheduling timings.
But some progress is being made in this direction. Professor Fan’s study also included companies from construction, manufacturing and hospitality sectors. Some of these have reported success. She says, “It can work in different sectors but I would not like to present four working hours as a magic solution. This is not a formula that can be applied everywhere.”
The younger generation is bringing about change
Experts believe that the biggest force behind this change will come from the younger generation. In a global survey of 2025, for the first time, work-life balance overtook salary in the list of most important things. Many young employees in South Korea say that they are ready to take less salary, provided the number of working days in a week is reduced.
Professor Fan says, “The fundamental thinking of the younger generation is different regarding the purpose of work and their expectations from life.” She says that movements like the Great Resignation (massive job loss after the pandemic) and Quiet Quitting (doing only essential work) and Lying Flat (rejecting the culture of excessive work) in China show that young workers are finding new ways to express their dissatisfaction and reject the culture of burnout. Over time, these changes can reshape workplace traditions. Hiroshi Ono is also seeing some changes in Japan.
He says, “Now 30 percent of Japanese men take paternity leave. Earlier this did not happen at all.” He says, “This shows that people have started giving more importance to their well-being.” Karen Lowe agrees with this. She says, “For the first time, employees have really started protesting. The younger they are, the more they are demanding change. She believes that the demand for change is now gaining momentum. She says, “Covid gave us the first turning point. I hope the next turning point will be the four-day working week.”
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