A four-day work week sounds great in theory, but does it work in practice?

The four-day work week has attracted a lot of attention in recent years as organizations rethink their practices in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Early evidence suggests that employees like it; according to a 2023 report from York University analyzing data from 30 Canadian firms employing 3,500 workers, 96 per cent reported happier and healthier workplaces after adopting a four-day work week. The study also found that shortened work schedules “significantly reduced feelings of burnout and job stress for women.”
But do these benefits extend to business performance, revenue and customer satisfaction? Some organizations say it’s helped them attract business and expand operations, attributing those positive results to contented staff. (Notably, in all the examples here, staff salaries remained unchanged despite the reduction in work days.)
As Leena Yousefi, CEO at Vancouver-based law firm YLaw, says, “No employer is going to implement something that they think is not going to make them money.”
YLaw adopted a four-day work week in 2021, with Wednesday as the non-working day. Ms. Yousefi says that over the subsequent three years, the organization’s net income and size has doubled. One important contributing factor is that employees aren’t leaving for other firms, she says.
It was challenging for a family law firm to adopt a four-day work week because of the sector’s risk-averse, traditional nature, Ms. Yousefi notes. Because they often deal with urgent matters, the move required thorough planning and focused execution. All staff members understood that “if one [person] takes advantage of this concept and isn’t productive or does something that is going to harm the [business], we’re going to have to take it away.”
Ms. Yousefi says the four-day work week gave her staff purpose. “They’re all players in this movement to achieve better mental health [and] better work life balance. So, it wasn’t just me, it was my entire company.”
To measure how things are going, she surveys her employees every three months.
“The biggest compliment [from staff] has been, ‘It’s not that I don’t have to work on Wednesdays, it’s the psychological freedom that if I don’t want to, I don’t have to.’”
Haley MacDonald, director of experience and change at non-profit Imagine Canada in Toronto, says that when her organization decided to pilot a four-day work week in January 2023, not everyone was on board.
“The five-day work week is a deeply entrenched mental model,” she says.
The idea was introduced by a few staff members, based on the philosophy of “less work, but better.” Ms. MacDonald says it was in response to the industry-wide burnout they had observed through the pandemic and a very competitive labour market.
The transition has been gradual, says Ms. MacDonald, starting with encouraging people to avoid Friday meetings then moving to Fridays off. While most employees embraced the new model, some resisted it, she says.
“I think for some folks, it was really difficult to scale back or go through a transformation due to the nature of the work they do, and for others, it [was] an attitude or a choice,” she says.
Bruce MacDonald, president and CEO of Imagine Canada, says that many of the organization’s board members have been intrigued by the initiative. “A number of them who work in the charitable sector are curious to hear what our experiences are,” he says.
Imagine Canada did encounter some opposition on the funding side, he notes. To mitigate concerns and provide transparency, they released a scorecard ten months into the experiment measuring both performance and well-being factors. Highlights include: a 66 per cent increase in overall mental, physical and emotional health of staff; a 40 per cent reduction in sick days and 100 per cent staff retention. Metrics showed that overall productivity had remained consistent, “having slightly risen in some areas and slightly declined in others.”
After evaluating two six-month trial periods, the organization extended the trial to the end of 2024 and will reassess before making it permanent. “We want to make sure that we’re not jumping to conclusions on its effectiveness before it’s given an analysis of a pretty dramatic change,” says Mr. MacDonald.
He notes that a four-day work week can be a key recruitment and retention tool for non-profits, because unlike the private sector, perks such as stock options, bonuses or employee cars aren’t possible.
Eeman Khan, who joined Imagine Canada in 2021 as senior coordinator for client success and corporate citizenship, says that by making “a few adjustments” to her routine, she was able to pursue a master’s degree – something that would not have been possible without a four-day work week.
“I am able to bring more to my job and develop professionally, which is really beneficial in both ways,” says Ms. Khan.
A four-day work week model can inject renewed energy into an organization, says Nicole Brown, CEO at FSET, an IT solutions provider based in Kenora, Ont.
Ms. Brown and her husband Dave, chief digital officer at FSET, decided to move to a four-day model after reading an article about the practice. In their version, the company’s 26 staff members are divided into two teams, with one half taking Mondays off and the other half taking Fridays off. This means there are only three days per week where everyone is on.
Ms. Brown says that when they first floated the idea, many on staff were skeptical about how it would work, and whether it would even work at all. “They said, ‘We don’t want to get so excited and then have it not happen,’” she says.
There were some growing pains too. For example, staff working in different departments found it challenging to collaborate without muddling their off days. But those kinds of issues can generate opportunities, says Ms. Brown. In one case, a member of the technical staff was allowed to manage a project, allowing her to develop her skills and avoid disrupting anyone’s off days.
“She’s actually now far more important with our client because she’s managing the onboarding and that relationship,” she says.
The four-day work week model has also attracted a lot of interest with potential hires, says Ms. Brown.
“We had four Java jobs out over the course of January, and we do advertise our four-day work week trial, and one of our ads alone had 500 applicants,” she says.
Ms. Brown says that revenue has been very strong since the move to the four-day work week. And, most importantly, everyone’s happy.
“[It’s] radically changed the mood of the organization.”
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