Comment: Why the four-day week is not the solution to work stress Published on: 14 September 2021 Writing for The Conversation, Professor Abigail Marks discusses the issues surrounding a shorter working week. Is this you? , , Scotland is to become the latest nation to trial a , after the it was setting up a 拢10 million fund to enable some office businesses to cut workers鈥� hours without reducing their pay. Similar trials are underway in and , following on from trials several years ago. have also been experimenting with four-day weeks, while other nations are encouraging their employers to think about it too. But how helpful is a four-day week for workers really 鈥� and how realistic? The truth is that there are problems with this attractive idea that tend to be ignored by the enthusiasts. So what are they and can they be overcome? Productivity and the 40-hour week At the heart of a nation鈥檚 economic activity is productivity, which in this context refers to the total output of each worker over a particular time period. In the UK at least, the traditional view is that a full-time working week of approximately 40 hours is the way to maximise people鈥檚 productivity. 鈥淓ight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest鈥� was coined in 1817 by Robert Owen, the famous mill owner, philanthropist and labour rights activist. This vision of a five-day, 40-hour work week is rooted in an industrial setting, when most people worked outside the home, in factories and other manufacturing facilities. In such a setting, working from home or outside of business hours was impossible. Robert Owen, Mr 8-8-8. Those days are long gone, and two-income households are no longer rare. Nowadays, when both members of a couple would normally be working, there is less time for children, looking after older relatives, chores, errands, preparing food and everything else that is undertaken outside of working hours. Managing these tasks ever more complicated and stressful. A four-day working week should therefore be a massive relief, so it鈥檚 easy to see why lots of people are of it. So where鈥檚 the problem? Britain鈥檚 long hours culture The average working week in the UK is now , and the nation is also the of Europe. As many as two-thirds of employees are said to work longer than their contracted hours, averaging 6.3 hours of free labour per week, usually sitting in front of a computer or smartphone at home. This implies that employers are unlikely to be able to afford to reduce each employee鈥檚 workload 鈥� particularly after the financial pain of the pandemic. Many employers signing up for a four-day week would probably therefore expect workers to undertake the same amount of work within four days that was undertaken previously in five. Assuming that the average person is currently spending all their working hours actively working, doing the same job in four days would mean working over 12 hours a day. That鈥檚 considerably more than Robert Owen鈥檚 eight-hour day, and clearly not feasible for the majority. Even if it was feasible, it wouldn鈥檛 be very productive. medium-skilled employees who work in front of a computer and work beyond 4.6 effective hours a day produce smaller quantities of output per hour due to fatigue. For more inexperienced employees, the numbers are worse. People who work excessively long days lower levels of overall wellbeing. While people have been working at home during the pandemic, they have not necessarily been working longer hours but the hours they have worked have been , with fewer breaks and less movement between tasks and locations. This short-term productivity gains, but this shouldn鈥檛 be a cause for celebration: with increased work intensity and more porous boundaries between home and work, employees found it difficult to mentally remove themselves from work, further of exhaustion. Having to work even more intensively over four days is arguably more than many could cope with. Some organisations might look at practical issues like these and decline to be part of a four-day work week. Others will say it鈥檚 impossible due to the nature of the work (emergency services, medical work and hospitality). Many workers will say it鈥檚 unworkable for them due to the volume of work (bank debt collectors, university staff); or because they already work crippling 12-hour shifts and can鈥檛 cram more into a day (delivery drivers, many self-employed workers); or don鈥檛 earn enough to have the luxury of having three days off each week (care workers, gig-economy workers). Alternatives For most of us, a four-day work week therefore feels more like a pipe dream than a realistic ambition. It will benefit the very few whose organisations can reduce their workload to make it appropriate to four days. This is likely to apply to government workers, since their departments will have to be seen to be a 鈥渇our-day week success鈥�. But more generally, a four-day week is likely to exacerbate existing inequalities and create resentment against those who get to have a three-day weekend. Yet with nearly half of the UK workforce indicating that they are suffering , clearly something has to be done. Workers need to be working fewer hours, and particularly fewer intense hours. four-day week =聽new inequality. Governments need to focus on ensuring that employees have increased control over the hours that they work, supported by independent bodies that can ensure that businesses uphold good working conditions. The UK government鈥檚 was supposed to help in this respect, though it has been by COVID. Or, if we are serious about a four-day week, we鈥檒l need to make it affordable for more employees to manage on less. That would require a universal basic income 鈥� and this is one excellent reason for pushing for it to happen. , Professor of the Future of Work, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . 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