The four-day week legislation and future possibilities

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the Brightmine podcast, formerly known as the XpertHR podcast. Brightmine is a leading provider of people data, analytics and insight, offering employment law expertise, comprehensive HR resources and reward data to meet every HR and organisational challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.brightmine.com.

My name is Robert Shore, and today we are going to be discussing the four- day working week, a topic that has been much in the news of late. Now, this can be quite a confusing area so we hope that what follows will help to clear up misunderstandings and misconceptions. But I do have to warn you at the outset that we’re going to be using the phrase ‘four-day week’ in two different ways. In the first part of the podcast I’m going to be talking to Brightmine legal editor Stephen Simpson about the four-day week in relation to issues such as flexible working and compressed hours. This is the compliance material that organisations need to know about right now.

Then in the second part, I’m going to be talking to Joe Ryle about the campaign to introduce the four-day working week, which means reducing the number of hours people work per week to 32 but without reducing their pay. Various employers took part in the trial scheme a few years ago and another is about to launch. But this version of the four-day week is very much a future- of-work idea. There is no legislation in the works for this.

So, let’s begin then with the compliance question, the bit that is happening right now. And for this I’m joined by Stephen Simpson. Stephen, welcome.

Stephen Simpson: Hi Robert.

Robert Shore: Right, let’s kick off with the current law. So first of all can you explain what we mean in this context by ‘compressed hours’, the way that compressed hours can allow someone to do five days’ worth of hours in four days?

Stephen Simpson: Sure, so we’re talking here about an employee moving to working the same number of hours, as you say, with no reduction in pay over a fewer number of days. The two classic models are working the same number of hours per week over four days instead of five, i.e. the four-day working week, and working the same number of hours per fortnight but just distributed over nine days instead of ten, i.e. a nine-day fortnight.

Robert Shore: Right, and what current laws are pertinent to working compressed hours?

Stephen Simpson: Well as the law stands, employees can’t really have the right to request flexible working from day one of employment. Essentially that means that employees have the right to request to amend their terms and conditions of employment. So that’s typically their working pattern, number of hours or work location. Normally that’s permanent although it could be agreed for a temporary period instead.

Robert Shore: Okay, and that can include moving to compressed hours?

Stephen Simpson: Yes, often the request will be to move to part-time working, but it could also include working the same number of hours but over fewer days, for example a four-day working week that involves working nine hours on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and eight hours on a Thursday to make up a 35-hour working week.

Robert Shore: So, an employer currently has to follow the right-to-request procedure if an employee requests to move to compressed hours?

Stephen Simpson: That’s right, the employer has to follow some prescribed rules. In essence this means that the employer has to deal with requests in a reasonable manor, which normally involves following a basic procedure. For example, an appeal against a refusal of a request in full or in part is recommended, consulting with the employee about the request, and informing the employee of its decision within two months of the request unless, that is, the employer and the employee agree to extend the period. That period increases the time needed to deal with any appeal against a rejection of a request in full or in part.

Robert Shore: And the reality is that employers currently have a wide discretion as to whether to accept a flexible working request, including a request to move to compressed hours, is that right?

Stephen Simpson: That’s right, the employer can reject a request under a wide range of prescribed business grounds which are just worth recapping on. They are the burden of additional costs, an inability to reorganise work among existing staff, an inability to recruit additional staff, a detrimental impact on quality, a detrimental impact on performance, a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand, insufficient work available for the pay which the employee proposes to work and planned structural changes to the employer’s business. This is often pointed out as a very wide permissible reasons for a rejection.

Robert Shore: Yes, those reasons then are very clearly heavily weighted towards the employer’s interests. Would you recommend making any exceptions to that where the advantage shifts towards the employee?

Stephen Simpson: So what I would always say to employers is that to be extremely cautious about turning down a request that could constitute incorrect sex discrimination, such as begets a new mother requesting to return to work from maternity leave on compressed hours, and if in a disabled worker requests to move to compressed hours as a reasonable adjustment to cope with their disability. I’d say that an employer would need to document a very, very good reason for turning down a request in those circumstances.

Robert Shore: Okay, you see a very good reason there. Could you give us an example?

Stephen Simpson: So, say the employer could show that the compressed hours requested means that the employee would not be working on the busiest day of the week and that would place an unacceptable extra burden on colleagues on that day. That’s where consultation with the employee and potential alternatives could be discussed. For example is there another different day of the week to the one that the employee is requesting as their non-working day that could be accommodated?

Robert Shore: We need to talk about advantages and disadvantages of compressed hours. What are the benefits of compressed hours?

Stephen Simpson: I know about the benefits of compressed hours as I’m someone who works a nine-day fortnight as an editor with Brightmine so I know first- hand about how it can help with, for example, wellbeing and work-life balance.

Robert Shore: And how would you categorise these main benefits then? [0:06:14.8]

Stephen Simpson: So in our guidance on making the business case [unclear – 0:06:19.2] for working including compressed hours, we recommend that employers should focus on eight areas. So these are: talent acquisition, talent retention, equality, diversity and inclusion, employee wellbeing, employee engagement, productivity skills and innovation, ESG, and cost savings.

Robert Shore: Yeah, so obviously lots of reasons why employees should think carefully about this. Can you pull out a couple of examples?

Stephen Simpson: It’s just the emphasis you should give to each of these eight will of course depend on the employer’s business goals and priorities and their culture and values. For example, if their focus is on the first two that I mentioned – that is talent acquisition and talent retention – offering compressed hours could be a really important element of making your organisation an employer of choice. Conversely, if business is struggling you may want to concentrate on the final three I mentioned – that is, cost savings. For example, could it be cost-effective to move to compressed hours if it means that you save costs, for example, by closing the workplace on Fridays?

Robert Shore: Okay. And what about the disadvantages of compressed hours?

Stephen Simpson: Well, I think you have to start with the reality that a compressed working week will not work for all employers, and there may actually be some industries where it broadly does not work at all.

Robert Shore: Okay. Can you give us a few examples?

Stephen Simpson: Sure. So I think it can be difficult or potentially impossible in sectors like hospitality, care and transport, and businesses that require staff seven days per week or 24 hours per day.

Robert Shore: And what about the potential impact on business and customer satisfaction?

Stephen Simpson: Yes, a four-day working week could cause difficulties in businesses where customers expect an instant response. While technology like AI can increasingly help to support customer service requirements, a lack of response or, say, a delayed response on a particular day of the week could lead to customer dissatisfaction impacting on profits. I know that in case studies in trials that was one of the biggest concerns from an employer’s point of view.

Robert Shore: Now, what about productivity being affected?

Stephen Simpson: There’s certainly potential for a four-day working week to have a negative impact on productivity, for example if an employer is trying to match the productivity of a five-day week in four days, which could increase pressure on employees, potentially leading to a drop in quality of work.

Robert Shore: And are there legal dangers, particularly when it comes to the number of hours worked per day?

Stephen Simpson: Yes. Employers need to make sure that employees aren’t overworking on particular days, for example pulling a 14-hour day with no break to make sure that they get all their work done in four days. That’s not good from a wellbeing perspective but it also risks breaching the working time regulations. Just a reminder that workers should take at least a 20-minute rest break in the course of any working day that exceeds six hours. You could easily imagine a worker not doing that because they are compressing their hours.

Robert Shore: And finally, we’ve talked about compressed hours not necessarily suiting some employers. There are some employees it won’t suit either, aren’t there?

Stephen Simpson: Yes. For example, there may be parents who actually value working seven hours per day over five days if they have to drop off or pick up their children from school. A nine- or ten-hour day might not work for them. So while compressed hours can have a lot of positives, we have to remember that there are potential negatives too.

Robert Shore: Right. Now, let’s talk about what’s coming up, the forthcoming law. So there are indications that the Government plans to introduce a right to request compressed hours, aren’t there?

Stephen Simpson: Yes. While it has gotten a lot of press attention, we don’t have a huge amount of detail at the time of recording as to what it will look like. It may be useful to start with what it definitely will not be. I’ve seen and heard it described as a new right for employees to demand to work four longer days per week rather than five days, and to continue to be paid the same amount for it. That won’t be the case.

What we may see is a specific right to request to move to compressed hours, something alongside the more general right to request flexible working.

Robert Shore: Right. And what else might we expect?

Stephen Simpson: In addition, the wording that Labour has been using in the run-up to the election and since the election suggests that the test for employers when considering flexible working requests, including requests to move to compressed hours, may be tweaked more in favour of the workforce. Currently employers can turn down requests, as we’ve said, in part or in full for any of the very wide business reasons that we’ve discussed earlier.

Robert Shore: Okay, and what could the new test be?

Stephen Simpson: So, the wording in Labour’s pre-election policy papers says that it will make flexible working the default except where it is not reasonably feasible. Post-election, the official Government briefing notes for the King’s Speech state that employers will be required to accommodate flexible working as far as is reasonable. This suggests that any flexible working laws will feature an increased expectation that employers that want to turn down requests demonstrate clearly why the flexible working request wouldn’t work, and it may be that the burden shifts from the employee having to show why they could move to flexible working to the employers having to show why the flexible working request cannot be accommodated.

Robert Shore: So, along with the burden shifting more towards the employer, what other practical implications might there be for employers?

Stephen Simpson: Well, if the onus is more on the employer there will be an increased emphasis on employers to keep a record of flexible working requests, particularly the reasons why they turned down any requests, with direct reference to the requirements of the employee’s role. They will need to keep clear evidence that they’ve consulted properly with the employee. I do wonder as well if there will be an increased expectation on employers to allow a trial period before any final decision is made.

Robert Shore: What about the implementation of these changes? Do we have a timetable yet?

Stephen Simpson: No. So at the time of recording in late September 2024 the changes to flexible working, to move the dial in favour of employees, are expected to be included in the text of the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill, which we’ll likely see in October. Given the length of time the bill and any supporting legislation will take to proceed through Parliament, I think the various possible implementation is late 2025 or possibly even into 2026. So employers have plenty of time to prepare and as always, Brightmine will keep you updated as more details of the legislative changes around flexible working emerge.

Robert Shore: Thank you, Stephen. So that covers the current situation with regard to the four-day working week. Now we’re going to talk about a different version of the four-day week, and this is really a bit of blue-sky thinking about the future of work. And for this, I spoke earlier to Joe Ryle.

And so to welcome Joe Ryle, campaign director of Four-Day Week, which is a not-for-profit. The basic proposition for Four-Day Week, I think, is a four-day, 32-hour working week with no loss of pay for workers. So obviously this is slightly different, Joe, from what the Government is sort of talking about at the moment. Can you explain the difference between that and the sort of compressed hours four-day working week that’s been in the news?

Joe Ryle: I guess the key thing to say is, you know, compressed hours is not a four-day week. You know, they’re completely different things.

Compressed hours is doing a 40-hour working week or a full-time working week in four days rather than five. And what we’re advocating for is a reduction of hours. You know, that’s the crucial part. We think there needs to be a reduction in working hours to four days a week with no loss of pay for workers. And that is the basis on which all the evidence now exists, you know, across the world, not just in the UK that shows, you know, a four-day week can be a win-win for both workers and employers because you then get the wellbeing benefits. And they’re often then passed back to the workplace, passed back to the employer. You know, in general when workers are better rested they tend to work better, is what we’re finding and what the evidence points towards. So that’s why we’re quite clear on that.

I mean, you know, we did broadly welcome the Government’s announcement around compressed hours because it is a move in the right direction. You know, sometimes compressed hours can be an important first step on the road to what we call a true four-day week where hours are reduced. It’s not what we’re campaigning for across the country, compressed hours.

Robert Shore: Where does the idea originate from?

Joe Ryle: I mean, funnily enough actually, President Nixon in America, a Conservative president, was one of the first people to call for a four-day working week back in 1956. But you have to go even further back really to start talking about where this originates from, which is to say it was 100 years ago that we won the weekend, which we still enjoy today. We used to work six days a week, and through various campaigns largely led by the trade union movement, people have the weekend around about 100 years ago. And it did take the best part of two decades, that shift.

And so what we’re saying is, well we’re 100 years later. The world of work has completely transformed around us. I don’t think anyone can really argue against that. Yet we’re still working a similar amount of working hours. You know, working hours have not reduced in the UK for decades. We’re still working almost exactly the same working hours as we were in the 1980s, and that’s despite all of the kind of technological gains and improvements we’ve seen. You know, you think about the smartphone and other technologies. We’re a lot more productive. Workers in general are a lot more productive than they were in the 1980s.

So where have those benefits gone? Where those benefits have largely gone is towards greater company profits. Workers have not benefitted as much as they should have done. And so we think a four-day working week is long overdue. And actually, if you think about automation, artificial intelligence, some of these even more technology we’re seeing that is going to make the workplace more productive, you know, there’s a really strong case for now being the moment for a move to a four-day week.

Robert Shore: Okay. So what are the benefits then for…I think you quote on your website and in your sort of campaign literature that it’s better for workers and employers and the economy and society and the environment.

Joe Ryle: It’s a long list, isn’t it?

Robert Shore: So how is it better for employers, actually? Let me ask you that.

Joe Ryle: Yeah, that’s a good place to start. So the research we have found – and we ran the world’s biggest pilot of the four-day working week so far; there’s been other pilots – and what they tend to all conclude is that productivity seems to be at least maintained, in some cases improved. And again, I think where that arises from is when…to put it simply, if you’re a rested worker you’re a better worker. It’s not good for anyone to have burnt-out, stressed, overworked workforce. It doesn’t produce good results for the worker or for the employer.

But there’s also been lots of other benefits. You know, we’ve seen profits often increase, usually always maintained. And really big benefits for job recruitment, job retention, you know, which is a really important thing at the moment with the way the economy is. There was a 57% reduction in the likelihood that an employee would quit after the 2022 pilot for the 61 companies that took part. So a huge boost for job recruitment, job retention.

Also just good for team morale, you know, team cohesion, you know. The four-day week can be a way of bringing a team together. You know, everyone’s working towards the same goal of having that extra day off. And you know, the number of sick days reduced as well. Sickness absence always seem to reduce almost straight away once moving to a four-day week.

So there’s lots of benefits. And it does really seem like, let’s be honest, we’re at the very, very beginning of this shift. You know, I would say hundreds and hundreds of companies have done it successfully in the UK so far, which is brilliant, but it’s still a very small amount compared to the entire economy. But those early pioneers really seem to be reaping the rewards.

Robert Shore: Okay. So you mentioned there the pilot in 2022, which had 61 companies participating, is that right?

Joe Ryle: Correct, yeah.

Robert Shore: And what did you find?

Joe Ryle: The first thing to say is at the end of that pilot, of the 61 companies that participated – and these were companies across a really diverse range of industries from retail, manufacturing, hospitality, and then you also had more office-based work, marketing, there were charities taking part as well – of those 61 organisations at least 56 decided to continue with the four-day week afterwards. The vast majority of those organisations, you know, were satisfied by the business performance, productivity was maintained. And we’ve talked already about the kind of employer benefits.

But on the employee side of things, you know, burnout was reduced by 71%. I think there were 3,000 employees in total taking part in this pilot so, you know, it was a pretty big sample size.

Robert Shore: How do you measure burnout?

Joe Ryle: They are self-reporting. So they’re staff surveys. And it wasn’t us doing the kind of research. There were academics from the University of Cambridge and also Boston College in America, using kind of standardized questions around wellbeing that are used elsewhere.

They took measurements before the trial began, I think at the halfway point as well, and then again at the end to see the kind of change over that six-month period.

So a 71% reduction in employers reporting burnout. Reported levels of anxiety, fatigue and sleep issues decreased, while mental and physical health booth experienced improvements. And then on the measures of work-life balance they also really improved. So respondents found it easier to balance their work with both family, social commitments, were more satisfied with their kind of household finances, relationships and how their time was being managed. So there were really huge benefits. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, yes it’s important that this works for businesses as well, but what the four-day week is ultimately about is about giving the people the time to be able to live more satisfied, more fulfilling lives, and it looks like the four-day week is a crucial part of that.

Robert Shore: Okay, so a couple of questions arising from that. One is, of the companies that didn’t adopt the four-day week after the pilot, why not?

Joe Ryle: Well there was only two or three of them. One of them actually went onto the four-and-a-half-day-week instead, so still reduced their hours but felt like the full four-day week, they weren’t quite ready for it.

The other company who have spoken about it more proactively, from my understanding they weren’t in a very good place before moving to a four-day week. And I think this is a crucial point to discuss. By the sounds of it, they were already struggling with the recruitment massively, and so they didn’t’ actually have enough staff when they started out to get the kind of work done that they needed to get done. You want to start from a place of strength, do it when things are working well. And we always recommend as well, for companies that are preparing to do any kind of trial, you know, use that preparation period to try and address any issues that might get in the way, that might make things more difficult, you know. Sit down with your staff, work out what can be improved beforehand so that it makes the transition a lot smoother.

Robert Shore: So you’ve got a pilot scheme that’s about to begin this year as well. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Joe Ryle: So it will definitely be a smaller pilot. I think there will probably be around 20 companies in the end. We’ve got a new Labour Government. We know that, for example, there’s a few people sitting around that Cabinet table who have been supportive of four-day weeks in the past and we felt like, well, this is a good opportunity to do a bit more research, do another pilot and present these results to the new Government next summer, but hopefully to have a new set of results showing that another batch of companies have done this successfully and that actually, this is something that the Government need to engage in. ‘Cause we’re not going to have a four-day working week for everyone without Government involvement working alongside business leaders and trade union leaders. You know, you cannot start to spread a four-day working week across the economy on a much wider scale, which is where we’d like this to go next without Government support.

Robert Shore: Just thinking about, say, bigger companies that sort of need to be open seven days a week. How does a four-day week work for them?

Joe Ryle: Implementation looks very different in each sector. I mean, the first thing to say is that, you know, there are massive cost savings to be made from improving job recruitment and job retention, which the four- day week seems to do. So there seems to be a kind of net cost gain from the beginning. So that’s important to factor in.

A lot of companies we’ve worked with have introduced the four-day week by a kind of three-day weekend where, for example, everyone has Friday off. In a society that’s still so dominated by the 9-5, five-day working week, we hope as that begins to change it’ll be more and more easy for companies to go down that kind of model. But for now, what we’ve seen is lots of companies rotating their days off. You know, you want to remain open for business five days a week, six days a week, seven days a week, but staff are kind of rota-ed on a kind of shift pattern where staff are doing four days a week but they’ll have different patterns.

At South Cambridgeshire District Council, which is the first local council to successfully move to a four-day week, half of their staff have Mondays off, half their staff have Fridays off. So there’s different ways of doing it.

And also as part of this is finding efficiencies. For example, there’s a brewery who took part in the 2022 pilot, you know, and they actually found by really, really drilling into all of the tasks that people were doing in their job, there were efficiencies to be found actually in the manufacturing process which actually saved time, which enabled staff to be doing four days a week, even though the operation was still going for five days. So there are efficiencies to be found.

And sometimes surprising, you know. People talk about the kind of customer service-facing roles being ones that are difficult to move to a four-day week, which is quite a traditional kind of concern where, you know, you have to answer phonelines and you can’t just not have anyone answering the phone on a Friday, for example. Even in organisations that have that in their operations, you know, we’ve found that not only are calls being answered more efficiently and more effectively, you can also change the shift and rota patterns so that you’re placing your resources around the busier times and having less resources around the less busy times.

So the four-day week in a way, it gets you to think about your whole, entire operation and does help to find those productivity improvements, which I think has been really exciting to work on with some of those companies.

Robert Shore: And how does it work for self-employed or people in the gig economy?

Joe Ryle: That’s trickier. A lot of people say, well, the four-day week doesn’t work for self-employed people and zero-hours contract workers. I would argue it the other way around. I would say zero-hours contracts doesn’t work for the four-day week. You don’t have any employment rights so you can’t benefit from any employment rights. And that, for many people, will include a four-day week.

At the same time, you know, the Government are talking about making the minimum wage a living wage, which will boost wages, you know, does make things like a four-day week more possible, you know. A four- day week is not going to solve all the problems of the economy. And we’re not saying, you know, everyone can have a four-day week overnight. It’s just not the way it’s going to happen, you know. What we’d expect and hope to happen is a gradual normalization of the four- day working week. And I think that’s starting to happen and feel confident is starting to happen. But you know, it took two decades to move from a six-day week to a five-day week. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a similar amount of time to move to a four-day week. So you know, there are going to be people listening to this who will say, ‘Well it just doesn’t apply for me right now,’ and that may be the case. But we do expect that to change in the future.

For some self-employed people, you know, they do have the freedom to be able to choose to do a four-day week already. Obviously it depends on what your income in.

We also need to recognise that we’ve had this huge change in the way that we live. And if we think about kind of smartphones and new technology, we have this always-on culture, which actually is very unhealthy a lot of the time, and actually it does create lots of unproductive time. So in some ways a four-day week is a part of this conversation around, ‘Actually, how do we have more freedom and more autonomy in our lives outside of work?’ because the balance just isn’t right at the moment, and we know that millions of workers are burnt-out, stressed and overworked. We know that millions of workers are actually choosing not to work. They’re saying, actually it’s not worth it.

I think this is also part of a conversation around, ‘How do we get people back to work?’ We get people back to work by making work more attractive, that I would say is sometimes missing at the kind of Government-level conversation.

Robert Shore: Yeah. No, that’s really interesting. Now obviously, Joe, you’re really busy with this. And so my question is, are you able to work a four-day week while being the campaign director for the four-day week?

Joe Ryle: Yeah, that’s a good question! I get asked this all the time. I’m pretty strict about my Fridays off. It’s very rare for me to ever work on a Friday. You know, obviously occasionally something might come up. There might be some meeting that I just can’t get out of on a Friday for an hour. You know, I’ll still do that and I’ll take that time back and get that time back.

Robert Shore: I would hope so. You’ve got to model good behaviour, haven’t you? That’s brilliant. So if people want to get involved or get in touch, where should they look, what should they do?

Joe Ryle: They should go on our website, www.fourdayweek.co.uk, and there’s lots of resources on there, both for businesses and employees in terms of how you can go about starting to think about this. You know, we have a consultation service that is free for 15 minutes. You can book in a free 15-minute conversation with us. We can talk through how it might work at your organisation. Lots of evidence on the website. So definitely don’t rule it out. We always say that the trial is a good way to go because you don’t have to make the commitment to do this forever with a trial. You know, you can just trial it for three months – or six months is probably the optimum amount of time – and then use that trial period to kind of tweak it as you go.

But you know, it does feel like in some sectors it may not be too far off where we get to a point where actually, if you’re not thinking about this you’re in danger of getting left behind, ‘cause it is something which is very, very popular with workers, and that comes back time and time again from all the polling. So yeah, definitely check us out.

Robert Shore: Joe, thank you very much.

Joe Ryle: Thanks for having me on.

Robert Shore: Right, that’s about all we have time for. So I just want to say thank you to Stephen and Joe for their contributions. There are, of course, lots of supporting materials on the Brightmine website, and I’ll put a link to those in the show notes. And until next time.