The 4-day week works, but the people pushing it have stopped listening to managers

The evidence base for the four-day working week has never been stronger. The 2022 UK pilot, involving 61 companies and 2,900 workers over six months, found that revenue held steady, employee wellbeing improved significantly, and most companies chose to make the arrangement permanent. Subsequent trials in Iceland, Australia, and Japan have produced broadly similar results.

So why, in the companies I speak with that have attempted implementation outside the trial context, does the picture look different? Why are middle managers — the cohort most critical to making any workplace change stick — consistently the most resistant, and why has the movement largely chosen to dismiss that resistance rather than understand it?