Iceland sees success with 4-day work week

  • A study in Icelandic government offices again shows the benefits of a shorter workweek.
  • Productivity rose enough to ensure that all services were still provided as needed.
  • Because of the study’s success, 86 percent of Icelanders now or soon will have the right to a shorter workweek.

Having rolled out a major program that reduced the work hours of more than 2,500 workers to four days per week, Iceland is calling the trials “a major success.”

“Workers experienced significant increases in wellbeing and work-life balance — all while existing levels of service provision and productivity were at the very least maintained, and in some instances improved,” says the report Going Public: Iceland’s Journey to a Shorter Working Week.

“The trials have shown that shortening working hours can have a powerful positive effect on work-life balance… the positive changes identified by participants ought to place shorter working hours as a prime strategy for other governments looking to address work-life balance and wellbeing deficiency in their economies.”

Given the success, Icelandic trade unions and their confederations achieved permanent reductions in working hours for tens of thousands of their members across the country. In total, roughly 86 per cent of Iceland’s entire working population has now either moved to working shorter hours or have gained the right to shorten their working hours.

Eighty-eight per cent of office workers in Canada would take a four-day work week if it was offered, found a 2019 survey released by Citrix.

1% of population
In 2015 and 2017, in response to campaigning by trade unions and civil society organizations, two major trials of a shorter working week were initiated by Reykjavík City Council and the Icelandic national government.

These eventually involved more than one per cent of Iceland’s entire working population — many of which moved from a 40-hour to a 35- or 36-hour working week without a reduction in pay.

The trials evolved to include nine-to-five workers alongside those on non-standard shift patterns, and took place in a wide range of workplaces, from offices to playschools, social service providers and hospitals.

In 2018, British Columbia company Beelineweb saw success in deciding to make the shift to four days of work per week.

Benefits of reduced hours
Workers involved in the trials experienced improvements in wellbeing at work while control workplaces working at full hours showed no such improvements, according to the report.

Across both trials, many workers said they felt better, more energized and less stressed, resulting in them having more energy for other activities, such as exercise, friends and hobbies. This then had a positive effect on their work.

“Worker wellbeing dramatically increased across a range of indicators, from perceived stress and burnout, to health and work-life balance,” says the report.

The shift to shorter working hours also led to better work-life balance and made it easier for workers to do errands and participate in home duties, according to the report. And productivity and service provision remained the same or improved across the majority of trial workplaces.

After spending August 2019 experimenting with a four-day work week in a country notorious for overwork, Microsoft Japan said sales per employee rose 40 per cent compared with the same month last year.

Overtime concerns
One popular concern about a shorter working week is that it will unintentionally lead to overwork: to maintain the same output, workers will simply end up making up their ‘lost hours’ through formal or informal overtime. But the trials directly contradict this concern, says the report from the Association for Sustainability and Democracy (Alda) in Iceland and U.K. based think-tank Autonomy.

“The stated reduction in working hours did lead to staff actually working less as a direct result of workplaces implementing new work strategies, and through organizing tasks via cooperation between workers and managers… Most commonly, this was done by rethinking how tasks were completed: shortening meetings, cutting out unnecessary tasks, and shifts arrangements.”

An experiment in Iceland
Icelandic workers spend more hours per year in the office than do those of several other European nations and can be less productive during that time than some of those other workers. The experiment was designed in hopes of meeting the work-life balance of Icelanders, improving productivity in the workplace, and providing a route for bringing hours in line with their neighbors.

The first of the trials was carried out by Reykjavík’s city government between 2014 and 2019 at a few government offices and service centers. The trials eventually expanded to include more than 2,500 workers at “playschools, city maintenance facilities, care-homes for people with various disabilities and special-needs, and beyond.”

Workers in the experimental locations saw their hours reduced from 40 to 36 or 35 hours per week with no loss in pay. The exact way these hours were organized was determined by the individual workplace involved. Many opted to split the hours among four days, while others worked a five-day week with one workday being shorter.

A second trial was carried out by the Icelandic national government at about the same time, starting in 2017 and ending in 2021. This involved 17 workplaces across the country.

Iceland, home of the four-day workweek
Both studies produced similar results. The reduction in hours caused either no change or an increase in productivity and improvements in the reported work-life balance of employees. While many employees were concerned that more work would be crammed into less time, the data show that the workers were actually working less.

Improvements in efficiency were found in every workplace. Employees worked faster. Time-wasting events, like unnecessary meetings, were curtailed. Routines were changed to be more efficient, and shifts and schedules were restructured. Overtime was needed in some offices, but only sparingly.

Importantly, services were provided at the same levels as they were before the reduction in work hours. The well-being of workers dramatically improved, with many reporting increased time with their families, lower stress levels, and a better ability to balance their work and home lives.

The two trials included more than 1 percent of Iceland’s workforce. Thanks to its success, 86 percent of Icelandic workers are on contracts that either reduce their workweek or grant them the right to reduce their workweek in the future.

Work smarter, not harder

The idea of a four-day workweek or reduced hours with no cut in pay is being discussed and tested in many places. The six-hour day has been tried in Sweden to great fanfare. Offices in New Zealand saw dramatic gains in productivity after switching to a shorter week. Microsoft tried a four-day week in Japan and got similar results.

Indeed, the results from Iceland are typical. Anna Coote, principal fellow at the New Economics Foundation, explained in an email to BigThink how the report was well in line with previous studies:

“It confirms other evidence that reduced working time is popular with employees, provided there is no loss of pay. It also confirms the importance of combating low pay at the same time as moving towards shorter working hours. A four-day week (or its equivalent in hours) must benefit lower income groups, not just those on higher pay. No one should have to work long hours just to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.”

A four-day workweek is coming

In the book The Case for a Four Day Week, Coote and her co-authors examine the impact of a four-day workweek on society. They foresee a number of changes for society at large.

For example, it is still the case that women do more housework than men. However, the Iceland experiments showed that men in the study performed a larger share of household duties due to spending less time at the office. A four-day week could also benefit the environment through wasting less energy and fewer commutes.

“What is ‘normal’ is not natural or heaven sent — it is constructed over time by human-made structures and systems. Yesterday’s ‘normal’ was a 10-hour day. Working people won the right to an eight hour day through a protracted struggle over many years of social and economic change. Tomorrow’s ‘normal’ is likely to be a 4-day week or its equivalent in hours across a week, month, year or lifetime.”

If the four-day workweek indeed becomes the norm, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Iceland.