The success of Iceland’s ‘four-day week’ sounds too good to be true – because it is
In interpreting the results of such studies, one always needs to be cautious.
Representational image. | Vivek Prakash/Reuters
It almost seems too good to be true: a major trial in Iceland shows that cutting the standard five-day week to four days for the same pay need not cost employers a cent (or, to be accurate, a krona).
Unfortunately, it is too good to be true.
While even highly reputable media outlets such as the BBC have reported on the “overwhelming success” of large-scale trials of a four-day week in Iceland from 2015 to 2019, that’s not actually the case.
The truth is less spectacular – interesting and important enough in its own right, but not quite living up to the media spin, including that these trials have led to the widespread adoption of a four-day workweek in Iceland.
They did not involve a four-day workweek. This is indicated by the report’s title – Going Public: Iceland’s journey to a shorter working week. In fact, the document of more than 80 pages refers to a four-day week just twice, in its first two paragraphs, and only then as a reference point for what the trials were actually about:
In recent years, calls for shorter working hours without a reduction in pay – often framed in terms of a “four-day week” – have become increasingly prominent across Europe.
Read on to the third paragraph and you’ll learn the study “involved two large-scale trials of shorter working hours – in which workers moved from a 40-hour to a 35- or 36-hour week, without reduced pay”.
Going Public: Iceland’s Journey to a Shorter Working Week, June 2021.
A four-day week trial would have involved reducing the working week by seven to eight hours. Instead, the maximum reduction in these trials was just four hours. In 61 of the 66 workplaces, it was one to three hours.
This is not to say the results – no adverse effect on output or services delivered – is unimpressive. Nor is the upshot. As a result of the trials, unions and employers have formalised country-wide agreements to make reduced working hours permanent.
But these have provided for a reduction of just 35 minutes a week in the private sector and 65 minutes in the public sector (though larger reductions are available for shift workers). That is a long way from making a four-day week the norm.
‘Hawthorn effect’
In interpreting the results of such studies, we always need to be cautious.
In regard to this and similar experiments, it is always possible the “Hawthorne effect” might have been at work. This effect refers to 1930s experiments with factory workers in the United States that showed how their awareness of being the subject of experiments affected their behaviour, and hence productivity levels.
Could this have been at work in the Iceland trials? The work units involved volunteers to take part in the experiments and so might well have been motivated to make them work as intended. This may not be replicated in more widespread changed working arrangements.
Workers could, of course, be expected to enjoy reduced working hours, but would they replicate the working practices required to maintain productivity levels?
This depends on the nature of these changed working practices and their sustainability. This in turn may depend on whether enhancements in productivity are achieved by harder or more intensive working or by “smarter” working and/or improved equipment. This all calls for further research.
Furthermore, in service-industry settings such as the Iceland examples, a control sample of similar workplaces should ideally be monitored to be sure of the reliability of the conclusions drawn.
It won’t come easy
Despite these words of caution, there is still a strong case to be made for a four-day week. It is a case I have argued previously in my book Whatever Happened to the Leisure Society? (Routledge, 2019).
There is no reason why the long-term march towards reduced working hours should stop at the arbitrary “standard” figure of five days and 40 hours established in the post-World War II period.
Experiments will continue. I have written previously in The Conversation about some of these in Japan and New Zealand. The Autonomy think tank has counted a dozen, most of them by smallish “creative” agencies but also by consulting heavyweight KPMG.
But I do not think the widespread adoption of the four-day week will come easily or necessarily all in one go. Instead, it is going to have to come incrementally.
It took half of the 20th century and a great deal of campaigning against concerted employer opposition for workers in Western industrial societies to reduce their standard working week from 60 hours over six days to 40 hours over five days.
It is just not likely to come as effortlessly as these misleading reports suggest.
Iceland tested a 4-day workweek — and it’s an ‘overwhelming success’
Employees are happier and productivity hasn’t changed. Could other countries follow Iceland’s example?
This Dec. 1, 2011, file photo shows an exterior night view of the Harpa concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik, Iceland.Gregory Payan, Associated Press
The world’s largest trial of a shorter workweek has ended as a “major success,” reported NPR. For four years, Iceland tested a shortened workweek. The final report on the trials — published this month — offers compelling support for the concept.
- Iceland’s trial of a four-day workweek saw worker well-being increase “
dramatically” across a range of indicators while productivity stayed the same or even increased, CNN reported.
How did Iceland test a four-day work week?
Between 2015 and 2019, 2,500 Icelandic employees from a range of industries reduced their work hours to work only 35 to 36 hours a week — without any pay cuts, CNN reported. Some participants had typical 9-5 jobs while others had nonstandard work schedules.
- According to NPR, participants worked at “day cares, assisted living facilities, hospitals, museums, police stations and Reykjavik government offices.”
To cut their work hours, employees reduced meetings or stopped them altogether. Others took turns leaving early or shifted their schedules to start earlier. Some shortened their business hours or cut coffee breaks, NPR reported.
Thanks to @MorningBrew i know where I’m moving to next: Iceland. Four-day work week here i come.— Mere (@MereBearieboo) July 7, 2021
What did the results find?
According to the final research report, “worker well-being dramatically increased across a range of indicators, from perceived stress and burnout, to health and work-life balance,” said USA Today.
- Simultaneously, worker productivity stayed the same or improved across the majority of workplaces, CNN said.
- Working fewer hours led people to organize their time and delegate tasks more efficiently, NPR reported.
- Those who worked fewer hours perceived themselves as having more control and freedom in their life, thus increasing their well-being, reported CNN.
- After the trial started, men took on more responsibilities around the house, reducing household stress, CNBC reported.
- People exercised more and saw friends more often, per NPR.
According to Will Stronge, the director of Autonomy, a U.K.-based think tank that co-led the research, the trial “was by all measures an overwhelming success,” CNN reported.
Stronge says the study “shows that the public sector is ripe for being a pioneer of shorter working weeks — and lessons can be learned for other governments,” per CNN.
Will other countries follow this model?
Following the completion of the trial in Iceland, about 86% of employees in the country have already begun working fewer hours or have added this into contract negotiations — without pay cuts, reported USA Today.
- However, Iceland is tiny. The whole workforce is only about 200,000 people, NPR reported.
Spain has also announced a similar pilot project that will run for three years and spend $42.3 million to allow companies to try reducing their work hours with minimal risk, USA Today said.
- Individual companies — particularly tech companies or other large firms in the U.S. and Japan — have also begun testing shorter workweeks with strong success, reported Axios. However, these tests are still just tests that involve only a fraction of all jobs in the economy.
Iceland’s Four-Day Work Week Trial ‘An Overwhelming Success’
Iceland's successful four-day week trials may pave the way for shorter workweeks across the world (Photo: Courtesy of Unsplash)
Iceland’s four-day workweek trials were recently deemed an “overwhelming success” by researchers, citing improved or maintained productivity levels in the office as well as increased happiness levels for workers.
The trials, which were held from 2015 to 2019, were two large-scale trials conducted by the Icelandic government, city authorities and BSRB, one of the major trade union confederations in Iceland. In the trials, over 2,500 workers—over one per cent of Iceland’s working population—reduced their 40-work week to 35 to 36 hours with no pay reduction.
Researchers found that not only did productivity and service provision showed improvement or remained largely the same, but the workers’ well-being also dramatically increased with less perceived stress and burnout and improved health and work-life balance.
Since the completion of the two trials, 86 per cent of Iceland’s workforce have adapted to shorter working hours or gained the right to shorten their workweek.
The call for shorter working hours without a reduction in pay has grown increasingly prominent across Europe in the last few years. In the rest of the world, work-life balance has been one of the most talked-about topics during Covid-19 as many of us struggled to find downtime with the new work-from-home module.
Luckily, it seems like more companies are realising the benefits of prioritising their employee’s well being. Just last month, Bumble’s CEO gave their staff an extra week off to recover from burnout, while numerous companies around the world have adapted optional work-from-home policies to provide staff with more flexibility.
When it comes to citizens’ satisfaction levels, Iceland has been continuously leading on top. From its generous social safety net for citizens, to its quality healthcare system and generous paid parental leave for both parents, it’s no wonder that Iceland's capital was recently named the world’s least stressful city in the world.