Reducing working hours is central to the current labor debate in several countries, especially in Europe. Germany, for example, has just completed its experiment with the four-day workweek and already has preliminary results: 73% of participating companies don't want to return to the five-day workweek.
Germany’s test. At the end of 2023, Germany began implementing the four-day workweek. The government followed the 100-80-100 model (100% salary, 80% working hours, and 100% performance). The organization 4 Day Week Global audited the model, which has already achieved good results in the UK.
As in the previous tests, the project consisted of two phases: a six-month phase of process analysis and optimization, and a phase in which, once the companies implemented the changes, they adopted the four-day week for another six months, reducing the normal working day by 20%.
Weeks that aren’t always four days. The ultimate goal of the German experiment was to test different implementation models for reducing working hours, so not all participating companies chose to work four days and close on the fifth. Instead, they used different methods to allocate the reduced workday.
Some companies reduced the workday asynchronously across teams, allowing the department to continue operating with fewer people each day. In other cases, they opted for a 4.5-day workweek and extended the vacation time of employees who took it proportionately.
45 companies across a broad spectrum. To make the test as representative as possible of the challenges German businesses would face if the government reduced working hours, the participating companies ranged from micro-enterprises with between one and nine employees to large corporations with more than 250 employees.
The German authorities also sought broad representation from various sectors as part of the experiment. Companies from the manufacturing, insurance, technology, media, trade, and education sectors participated in the trial.
73% say "yes" to four days. The most immediate finding at the end of the pilot is that 73% of the participating companies will maintain the reduced working hours as they’ve been implemented. Within this group, 20% will make minor adjustments but will largely keep the new structure. Only 20% of the participating companies said they would return to the previous model, while 7% remain undecided.
Doing more in less time. In terms of productivity, the German test produced results similar to previous experiments in Portugal, the UK, and South Africa. This may not be great news for Germany, which struggles with an inadequate productivity rate. The figures provided by companies suggest that they maintained the same or slightly increased productivity levels after reducing working hours.
The reasons: 60% of companies reduced the frequency and duration of meetings, while 25% introduced new digital tools to streamline processes. Employees’ perceptions of productivity improved during the experiment, as did their pace of work. However, their workload decreased due to these improvements.
Employee well-being. In terms of job satisfaction, the experiment mirrored results from similar international trials. Fifty percent of employees said their well-being had improved a great deal or quite a lot. Thirteen percent said it had improved somehow, while 31% reported slight improvement during the test. Only 6% said they experienced no improvement.
The data shows that employee satisfaction increased. Workers reported getting an average of 38 more minutes of sleep per week and exercising more. As a result, stress levels dropped during the week, and retention rates improved by eight points.
German employers want flexible work schedules. The German edition of Business Insider reported that the German Employers’ Association (BDA) isn’t in favor of shortening the workday but supports optimizing it, as the companies involved in the project did to make schedules more flexible.
BDA CEO Steffen Kampeter said, “Where it suits, working more Monday to Thursday and having Friday off—employees and employers could agree on that,” according to an English translation provided by Google.
Image | Samuel Hagger (Unsplash)
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