For a time, the four-day workweek seemed like it just might happen.
Like pandemic-era fixations we thought would last forever — looking at you, sourdough starter — the dream of working 32 hours a week for 40 hours’ pay seemed within reach for some.
Now, years later, hiring is sluggish, CEOs are demanding that workers lock in, and 9-9-6 memes can feel as pervasive as 6-7 mishegoss.
The chill settling over the workplace means that many workers’ hopes for four-day weeks are on ice — for now.
There appears to be “a pushback from management on the things that workers were gaining during the pandemic,” said Juliet Schor, a Boston College economist who has researched shorter workweeks.
Yet the idea of permanent three-day weekends isn’t dead, Schor and other backers told Business Insider. Instead, thanks to return-to-office orders and companies’ relentless focus on AI, broader adoption might simply take longer than advocates might hope.
Thanks, 9-9-6
One challenge, for now, is that the four-day talk doesn’t always jibe with narratives about doubling down on work. Some leaders have tired of discussions about work-life balance, and big employers, in particular, have been calling workers back to their cubicles.
In some ways, ideas like 9-9-6 — slogging from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — are a response to the four-day workweek, Schor said.
That’s even though trials from the UK to New Zealand run by Schor and other researchers have indicated that spending less time on the job can leave workers happier and less burned out — without compromising productivity.
For now, many CEOs are focused on the merits of RTO and the need to hustle. Some of that sober speech is a way for big bosses to signal to boards and investors that their employees will work harder than ever, said Vishal Reddy, executive director of WorkFour, a nonprofit that advocates for making the four-day, 32-hour workweek the standard.
“Part of it, I think, is a performance,” he said of CEOs’ directives.
Reddy said another reason there is less buzz about a four-day workweek is that the idea is no longer as novel as it was in 2020 and 2021, when some employers, looking to attract and retain workers, implemented the concept.
Carrying the idea forward, he said, will likely require waiting for the market to change and for workers to regain power.
Reddy said that he sees proposed legislation involving four-day workweek pilots in New York and Maine as signs that supporters haven’t given up on the concept.
There are still a number of examples of companies that have adopted shorter schedules. In nearly all cases, once employers adopt the schedule, they don’t go back, Reddy said.
The impact of AI
The challenges to adopting shorter weeks aren’t just practical considerations, like how to meet customers’ demands that someone picks up the phone on a Friday.
To make it feasible for employers to pay people the same for working one day less, the economy would have to really take off — growing in the high single digits or even double digits, said Pavel Shynkarenko, founder and CEO of Mellow, a contractor-management platform.
One factor that could help: AI.
If the technology can crank up workers’ productivity enough, a shorter week could be doable, Shynkarenko said. Having only four days on the clock could also help prevent widespread unemployment due to AI by spreading work among more people.
Essentially, the four-day workweek would serve as a “safe harbor” for the economy as it transitions to one where bots take on more of the tasks that now fall to humans, Shynkarenko said.
One day, he said, AI could make it so that even a four-day workweek would be unnecessary. Workweeks might only last two days, he said. Regardless, any departure from five days as the norm would likely take years, Shynkarenko said.
Until AI can do more heavy lifting, Shynkarenko said, there will be little room for discussion of truncated weeks because employers will face too much cost pressure.
Plus, in ultra-competitive industries like tech, an abbreviated workweek could be seen as a concession to competitors.
Schor, the economist, doesn’t expect that employers will be able to avoid the issue indefinitely, however. That’s because although workers’ stress and burnout rates have improved from COVID-19 crisis levels, progress has plateaued, and remains above pre-pandemic levels, she said.
“We’re still in that level of heightened stress,” Schor said.
The four-day guilt
Even if economic growth were to occur at a rapid enough pace to allow for a four-day workweek, other factors might still arise. One is that, in some cases, employees might feel a sense of shame about working less, said Dale Whelehan, an assistant professor in systems psychology at Trinity College Dublin, who supports shorter workweeks. Until January, he served as CEO of 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit advocating for less time on the clock.
“There was such an internalized sense of guilt towards not working hard enough or not performing hard enough,” he said, referring to what can happen at organizations that try out shorter weeks.
Nevertheless, Whelehan said, the benefits to worker well-being and companies’ performance are substantial enough that the conversation about the four-day workweek, which has been dampened for now, “is going to rise again.”
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