Is Iceland really living the four-day work week dream?

The con­cept of a four-day work week, where employ­ees can enjoy an addi­tion­al day off with­out sac­ri­fic­ing any pay, has been pro­mot­ed by unions and activist groups in recent years. While many recog­nise the ben­e­fits a reduced work­ing week would have for work-life bal­ance, imple­men­ta­tion has been lim­it­ed to a small num­ber of busi­ness­es and tri­als.

Ear­li­er this month, the push for a four-day work­ing arrange­ment was meant to have reached a turn­ing point after the results of the world’s largest four-day work week tri­al were pub­lished. The tri­als saw 1% of Iceland’s work­ing pop­u­la­tion take on reduced work­ing hours between 2015 and 2019. 

But despite being described as a shift to a four-day work­ing week in much of the media, the real­i­ty was that a major­i­ty of the Ice­landic work­ers moved from a 40-hour to 35- or 36-hour work week. For some shop work­ers involved in the tri­als, work­ing hours were only cut by 35 min­utes a week.

Hen­ley Busi­ness School pro­fes­sor Rita Fontin­ha explains: “It is impor­tant to clar­i­fy that the Ice­landic exper­i­ment did not nec­es­sar­i­ly include a move to a four-day work­ing week. The tri­als only includ­ed a reduc­tion in work­ing time of between four and five hours.”

This com­pares favourably to the cur­rent hours worked by employ­ees in the UK. The lat­est Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics results show that full-time employ­ees worked an aver­age of 35 hours a week between March and May 2021. 

Although the pan­dem­ic has like­ly had an impact on these fig­ures – with 3.4 mil­lion work­ers still on fur­lough, accord­ing to data from the end of April – the aver­age work week in the UK pre-pan­dem­ic (Novem­ber to Jan­u­ary 2019) was 36.9 hours. 

“This is not to say that the Ice­landic tri­als didn’t have impor­tant con­se­quences,” Fontin­ha adds. “Ice­land was one of the Nordic coun­tries that had longer work­ing hours, com­pared to Fin­land, Den­mark, Swe­den and Nor­way. Stud­ies have shown that mov­ing to a short­er work­ing week, regard­less of whether it’s a four day week or not, may have pos­i­tive con­se­quences for occu­pa­tion­al health and organ­i­sa­tion­al lev­el per­for­mance.”

What did the Icelandic four-day week trial achieve? 

Analy­sis from Ice­landic pro­gres­sive think tank Alda and UK equiv­a­lent Auton­o­my, found that a reduc­tion in work­ing hours either main­tained or increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, improved work­ers’ well­be­ing and cru­cial­ly remained rev­enue neu­tral for Reyk­javik coun­cil and the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment, which ran them. 

Auton­o­my researcher and co-author of the report Jack Kel­lam says: “These tri­als showed you can affect changes in work­ing time and reduce your hours for no loss in pay and through a rev­enue neu­tral approach. This isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly some­thing that’s par­tic­u­lar­ly expen­sive and can ben­e­fit organ­i­sa­tions and their employ­ees.” 

Although all those involved were pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, the tri­al includ­ed a mix of those involved in a nine-to-five work­ing pat­tern, as well as shift work, and includ­ed hos­pi­tal employ­ees, child­care work­ers and police. “It shows that short­er work­ing time can be a real pos­si­bil­i­ty beyond just office-based admin­is­tra­tive work, as some­times peo­ple assume,” Kel­lam says.

As a result of the pos­i­tive impact of the tri­als, 86% of Iceland’s work­ing pop­u­la­tion now work reduced hours or have the option to decrease their hours as part of their con­tract of employ­ment. 

Could a four-day week work in the UK?

Out­side Ice­land, the con­cept is also gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. The Scot­tish Nation­al­ist Par­ty has promised a four-day work week tri­al, while Spain also has plans to test reduced hours as part of a pilot project.

A 2019 YouGov poll of 502 UK busi­ness­es revealed that 64% sup­port the idea of adopt­ing a four-day week. Larg­er busi­ness­es — those with 500 or more employ­ees — were even more recep­tive to the idea, with 73% back­ing it.

Kel­lam says: “The desire for bet­ter work-life bal­ance has been there for quite a long time and it’s been grow­ing giv­en the over­work cul­ture lots of UK work­ers suf­fer. The pan­dem­ic has shown that we can make dras­tic changes to work­ing life, so there’s no rea­son a four-day week can’t hap­pen here.”

How­ev­er, back­ing for a four-day week is not uni­ver­sal. A brief­ing paper from the Social Mar­ket Foun­da­tion claimed that a reduced work­ing week could exac­er­bate exist­ing inequal­i­ties, with high­er earn­ers and men most like­ly to ben­e­fit from its intro­duc­tion. It sug­gests that a fair­er redis­tri­b­u­tion of the domes­tic work­load and more oppor­tu­ni­ties for the under­em­ployed would need to come along­side a four-day work week in order to make it a suc­cess for all.  

Fontin­ha says: “It is cru­cial to iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic needs of indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es so that we don’t empha­sise social inequal­i­ties, rather than imple­ment­ing a blan­ket approach for all.”

Flex­i­bil­i­ty will there­fore be key to mak­ing the tran­si­tion to a short­er work­ing week a suc­cess. 

One com­pa­ny that has moved to a more flex­i­ble work­ing arrange­ment is con­tent mar­ket­ing agency Red­Sprout Media. After ini­tial­ly tri­alling a strict Mon­day to Thurs­day work week, it found a work any­time pol­i­cy had more suc­cess. 

Com­pa­ny co-founder Mark Gais­ford says: “On the sur­face, four days a week is great but the prob­lem we found was that it is still too rigid as a sys­tem. Some peo­ple are night owls, some peo­ple are ear­ly birds. By allow­ing peo­ple to work at a time that their brain is at its best, we’ll hope­ful­ly get more out of our employ­ees.”

Employ­ees at Red­Sprout are now expect­ed to ded­i­cate 30 hours a week to work but are free to decide when and where this hap­pens. Gais­ford adds: “It’s no longer about hours at a desk, it’s about what you achieve in the hours that you’re work­ing.” 

While a short­er work­ing week has repeat­ed­ly been shown to have tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for both staff and employ­ers, it is impor­tant to care­ful­ly con­sid­er how it should be imple­ment­ed. Hen­ley Busi­ness School has esti­mat­ed that the four-day week already cre­ates com­bined sav­ings worth £92 bil­lion each year for UK busi­ness­es that have already imple­ment­ed it, while the qual­i­ta­tive data from Iceland’s exper­i­ments shows the pos­i­tive impact reduced work­ing hours have for work­ers’ well-being.

For employ­ers look­ing to tap into these ben­e­fits, dis­cus­sions with employ­ees and a flex­i­ble approach will be key to ensur­ing a pos­i­tive out­come for all.