Work one day less but receive the same pay: this model of work is taking the British economy by storm today. Thousands of employees should benefit.

In Britain, the four-day week is on the rise: a hundred companies have advocated the work model as a permanent solution. According to this, all employees should work one less day a week, with the same salary. The British media speak of a “milestone in the campaign for a fundamental change in the British work ethic”.

Hundred companies employ around 2,600 people in the UK who will benefit from the scheme, the British Guardian reported. Thus, proponents argued that the five-day week was a holdover from an earlier economic era. A four-day week makes companies more productive: they can do the same job with fewer hours. For some companies, this model has proven to be a useful tool for attracting and retaining employees.

The two largest companies joining the initiative are Atombank, a UK retail bank, and Awin, a global marketing company. Both employ around 450 people whose working hours have already been reduced.

Adam Ross, Awin’s CEO, told The Guardian that the introduction of the four-day week was “a revolutionary initiative” in the company’s history. Over the past year and a half, there has been a tremendous increase in employee health and well-being. Customer service and customer relations have also benefited, Ross says.

A large-scale experiment on the four-day week is currently being carried out in Great Britain. More than 3,300 employees from 70 companies will participate in the pilot project from June to December 2022. The aim is to test the effects of people working one less day at full salary.

The initiators of the study are the organization “4 Day Week Global” in cooperation with the think tank Autonomy and the campaign “4 Day Week”. In addition to Boston College, researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford also provide scientific support. Similar experiments are currently underway in Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. Spain and Scotland are also planning similar studies.

“We’ll look at how workers respond to an extra day off in terms of stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy expenditure, travel and many other aspects of life,” said Juliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston. College and principal investigator of the Guardian project.

In September, 88 percent of participating companies said the four-day week worked well in this phase of the test. According to The Guardian, 95 percent of companies said productivity has stayed the same or increased since the experiment began.

Most of the companies that have officially opted for the four-day week are from the service sector, such as technology, events or marketing.

Joe O’Connor, chief executive of 4 Day Week Global, said the pandemic has shown companies what really counts in the fight for the best employees: work-life balance. “More and more companies are realizing that reducing hours can give them a competitive advantage,” O’Connor said.

The working model has also received great approval in Germany. According to a Forsa poll, 71 percent of citizens support the legal right to a four-day week. Read more about it here.