We urgently need a four-day working week to prevent burnout

Not all four-day work weeks are created the same. In Belgium, where workers have recently been given the right to request one, the idea is to work longer hours on those four days than someone who sticks with the traditional five-day work week.

But in Iceland, where a four-day work week was successfully trialled between 2015 and 2019, the whole idea is to work shorter hours for the same pay. And what a surprise: researchers there have found that productivity remained the same or actually improved in the majority of workplaces that offered four-day working.

Here, at least 17 companies have signed up to a six-month trial of a four-day work week backed by the campaign group Four Day Week Ireland. But there is little Government support for the idea that four days is "better for everyone", as the campaign slogan has it.

In the meantime, parents and carers – mainly women – who sacrifice chunks of their salary to work shorter hours continue to financially suffer as a result of Ireland’s relative lack of progressive thinking in relation to both working-hour flexibility and the nature of productivity as far as many types of job are concerned.

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Scale and speed of price rises on world markets is extraordinary

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Case studies

Luckily, the international case studies are piling up. In Scotland, a six-month trial is due to start next year, with its government providing £10 million (€11.9 million) to companies that allow workers to reduce their hours by 20 per cent without suffering any loss of pay.

Spain has also experimented with a four-day work week – and has eye-catchingly used European Union pandemic recovery funds to do so – while Japan is mulling the idea.

Campaigners have long argued there is little evidence that the four-day week dampens productivity – it’s the opposite. The pandemic has also focused minds on one very real phenomenon that definitely does hurt productivity: burnout.

Sadly, a four-day work week wouldn’t necessarily mean Fridays off for all. But the prevailing culture senselessly forces many workers to crawl through the fifth day of their working week, which for most will be Friday, with little energy left in the bank, only mental sluggishness and physical aches that carry on into blink-and-miss-it weekends.

As more and more people are despairing, this is no way to live. It is time employers – including the Government – got a move on and recognised it.