Shrink Your Week, Not Your Head

The UK has the longest working hours in Europe, and yet suffers from the competing stress patterns of over-work, under-employment and unemployment. The FS sector – and investment banking in particular – has come under fire for a long-hours culture and unrealistic demands.

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The UK has the longest working hours in Europe, and yet suffers from the competing stress patterns of over-work, under-employment and unemployment. The FS sector – and investment banking in particular – has come under fire for a long-hours culture and unrealistic demands. Only last year, Goldman Sachs junior analysts protested at brutal 95-hour weeks meaning only five hours sleep a night – while we now know that getting anything under seven hours’ sleep a night can cause mental ill-health and long-term, will also have negative physical effects.

Our ground-breaking research* tells us that, as women get higher up the promotion ladder and there are fewer stressors about being ‘at your desk’, you can get more done. Now, a large-scale trial of a 32-hour (or four-day) working week has just got underway in the UK. Studying the effects overall on both employer and employees, the pilot involves 3,000 workers at 60 companies. The universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Boston have joined with campaign groups and the think tank Autonomy to explore how well it works.

All the research, both internationally and in the UK, says individuals’ energy levels cannot be sustained for eight hours straight. Experts argue that the secret to productivity may be to do less, in shorter bursts, burdened with less stress. This is definitely borne out by the French experience, where productivity is higher than the UK. There the four-day week is standard and working hours are highly variable, allowing parents and carers to work around school times and appointments. Since 2017, the French have also had ‘the right to disconnect’ from their work phones and tablets for evenings and holidays.

Research by the Henley Business School shows that in pre-pandemic 2019, 82% of firms thought any productivity gains could be outweighed by a rise in staffing costs. Only 65% held this view post-pandemic*. There has been a huge rise in various models of hybrid and home working since. LinkedIn, meanwhile, has seen a five-fold increase in remote job postings.

The four-day week may not be the silver bullet for those worried about the concept called the ‘proximity effect’. Those who are seen daily may be promoted and preferred; an idea also known as presenteeism. This new experiment will study such issues. FTSE 100 companies already trialling the four-day week include London’s app-based Atom Bank. Many companies in Sweden, Iceland, Canada and the U.S. are already doing their own trials and research.

The time is right for experimentation. ‘We’ve basically come to an inflection point as a society that allows us to do this,’ says John Trougakos, the Canadian author of many research studies. ‘People’s minds are more open to it: we’re already in upheaval and change.”

* Accelerating Change Together (ACT)

Report: The four-day week: The pandemic and the evolution of flexible-working

*2021 survey. Henley Business School March 2022

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