It’s arriving in inboxes, rota tools and payroll systems — right now. Fifty more UK companies have just signed up to trial it this month, testing whether 100% pay for 80% time can still deliver 100% output. The stakes are practical, not philosophical: can shops stay open, projects ship on time, clients feel cared for — while people get a real extra day to live?
It’s 4.58pm on a Thursday in Bristol, and the usual end‑of‑week buzz has shifted. Screens dim. A few colleagues compare plans — a hill walk, a child’s school assembly, just the joy of laundry done before the weekend. There’s an *unhurried* hush as a manager checks next week’s rota on her phone, not with dread, but with the calm of a plan that might actually hold. A courier pops in looking confused: “You lot off tomorrow?” A cheeky reply: “On Monday. Stronger.” The fifth day is missing.
The four-day week grows up
Momentum is not a press release; it’s a calendar invite that disappears. This month’s cohort — fifty more companies — brings the UK’s biggest experiment in modern work into a sturdier phase. Accountancy firms sit next to design studios. A Midlands manufacturer joins arms with a charity helpline. Most are leaning on the **100-80-100 model**: full pay, 80% time, performance held. The aim isn’t to squeeze five into four; it’s to strip waste, sharpen focus and give time back without breaking what keeps the lights on. This round feels less like a novelty and more like operational change.
The backstory matters. In the landmark UK pilot in 2022, 61 organisations tried a four-day week for six months with no salary cuts. Self‑reported burnout dropped by 71%. Sick days fell by roughly two‑thirds. Revenue, on average, nudged up about 1–2%. Nine in ten companies kept the policy after the pilot. That gave cover for cautious leaders who needed proof it wasn’t just a coastal tech fad. Today’s joiners are drawing on that playbook, but they’re also testing harder contexts: seasonal peaks, on‑call rotas, legacy systems that don’t bend easily.
Look inside one firm and you see the real work. A Leeds engineering consultancy maps its client meetings to tighter windows, trims standing catch‑ups, and moves complex tasks to protected blocks. Emails get batch processed; updates recorded to watch later. The team staggers rest days so Fridays aren’t a ghost town. They walk through failure scenarios: a tender lands late, a site visit overruns, a developer gets ill. The point isn’t perfection. It’s a safety net that catches most of the mess life throws. That’s why this wave matters: the experiment is moving from ideals to infrastructure.
Making four days work in the real world
Start with a coverage map. List the moments customers, patients or partners truly need you, then ring‑fence those as service windows. Everything else gets rebuilt for pace: meetings shrink to 25 or 50 minutes; deep‑work blocks become sacred; routine tasks get automated or batch‑handled. Agree **staggered rest days** by team so no one is unreachable, and publish them publicly — on email footers, Slack statuses, even your phone menu. Then pilot in four‑week sprints, with a single metric dashboard visible to all.
People don’t fail these trials because of laziness; they fail them through drift. A Friday creeps back as “just a quick” inbox tidy. Meetings expand again. Cramming becomes a quiet habit. Build guardrails early. Write down what “done” means for each role. Rotate critical on‑call duties and trade days when life gets messy. Pay attention to equity: shift‑based and low‑control roles need creative rotas, not just slogans. Let’s be honest: nobody really does this every day. Progress comes in loops — that’s normal, and it’s survivable.
When resistance surfaces, it usually masks a fear: loss of control, loss of service, loss of career pace. Speak to that, not just the hours.
“We stopped asking, ‘Can we afford a day less?’ and asked, ‘What would have to be true for four days to outperform five?’ That flipped everything,” says the HR director of a mid‑sized Manchester tech firm.
- No pay cuts during the trial. Compensation stability keeps trust intact.
- Publish clear SLAs for response and turnaround. Predictability beats constant availability.
- Kill recurring meetings that don’t ship outcomes. Replace with written updates.
- Protect two deep‑work blocks per person per week. That’s where output is earned.
- Run a weekly retro: what saved time, what wasted it, what we’ll try next.
What happens next
Fifty new companies means thousands more people learning what time feels like when it’s not always borrowed. Some will bank the extra day for childcare, side projects or simply a long nap. Others will notice small shifts: fewer late‑night emails, a lunch that isn’t eaten standing up, a weekend that starts earlier than it used to. We’ve all had that moment when a Sunday evening feels heavy — this trial is a shot at lifting that weight. Shareholders will watch margins. Unions will watch fairness. If this wave holds, the conversation moves beyond office jobs and into the wider economy. And if it falters, the lessons will still be gold: where the friction sits, which processes waste our lives, and how to build work that breathes.
| Key point | Detail | Interest for the reader |
|---|---|---|
| New UK trial wave | 50 additional companies start a four‑day week this month under the 100‑80‑100 model | Signals momentum — this is moving from trend to testable norm |
| Evidence from 2022 pilot | Burnout down 71%, sick days down ~65%, revenue slightly up; 90% kept the policy | Reassurance that performance can hold or improve |
| How to make it work | Coverage maps, shorter meetings, asynchronous updates, **staggered rest days**, weekly retros | Practical steps you can try in your team next week |
FAQ :
- Do people take a pay cut during the trial?No. The standard approach is 100% pay for 80% time, with output held at 100%.
- Which sectors are joining this month?A mix: professional services, tech, manufacturing, charities and some customer support operations.
- What if our work is shift‑based or public‑facing?Teams stagger days off, rotate on‑call cover and set clear service windows so customers aren’t left hanging.
- How do we stop five days getting crammed into four?Define “done” per role, cut low‑value meetings, batch admin, and track workload in weekly retros with honest adjustments.
- What happens if productivity drops?Treat it as data: fix bottlenecks, iterate for a sprint, or pause the pilot. The trial is a test, not a forever promise.
