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We've been following the four-day week campaign for a while. It was in the news again this week after South Cambridgeshire District Council published the findings from their trial.
Hats off to them for completing the trial after coming under pressure from the Government to halt it.
A four-day week is a schedule that requires delivery of 100% of the work in 80% of the time for 100% of the pay.
For the Council, one of the main objectives was to reduce costs by attracting recruits to fill roles permanently that were previously filled by agency staff by making the Council a distinctive place to work with its offer of a four-day week.
It seems to have worked and employee retention has improved too.
Another positive is that scores measured by the Council's employee survey have gone up for employee commitment, mental and physical health and motivation since the trial started while maintaining standards for 22 out of 24 KPIs.
There are criticisms of the four-day week.
One often heard is that if it is possible to increase productivity to fit 5 days work into 4 days why not keep up the level of productivity over 5 days and achieve more.
This misses the point. The fundamental argument for the 4-day week is that employees have more energy, are more focussed and are able to be more productive over four days but they would not be able to maintain the same levels over 5 days especially without a 3 day break to recover.
The Council does acknowledge that it is not possible to say that the four-day week was the cause of all the improvements.
One thing I noticed reading through the report was that as part of the implementation of the trial teams were empowered to challenge the way things worked and regular feedback and drop-in sessions were run. The Council's hybrid policy was modified too. All of which might have led to improvements without the switch to a four-day week.
Nevertheless, there is growing evidence from around the world of the benefits of the four-day week and we'll continue watching with interest.
