Work-related activities are widely recognized for their significant environmental impact. Commuting to work—particularly by car—contributes to rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and many workplaces maintain a substantial ecological footprint. Although remote work mitigates some of these effects, employee well-being and work-life balance are equally crucial for fostering truly sustainable lifestyles. A flexible working model based on a four-day workweek may offer a solution to these challenges.
Four-Day Workweek Models around the World
Following the Industrial Revolution, both worker burdens and labour hours increased steadily. Strengthening trade unions responded by successfully campaigning for the five-day working week. Although researchers proposed a four-day model as early as the 1970s, the idea only regained traction in the 2000s. Today, two primary models exist. The 100–80–100 model, which reduces weekly hours from the standard 40 to 32 while maintaining full pay, and the compressed model, which retains the 40-hour total but spreads it over four longer days (usually ten hours each).
Belgium is the only country to have enacted specific legislation: a 2022 reform that allows workers to request a compressed four-day week. However, the first successful 100–80–100 pilot project—driven largely by private entities—took place in Iceland between 2015 and 2019. The majority of Iceland’s employees work under this framework now, mostly via collective agreements. In June 2022, a comprehensive 100–80–100 initiative was launched in the United Kingdom, involving 61 companies and more than 2,900 employees over a six-month period. In Spain and Poland, the introduction of the four-day work week is encouraged by the state through financial support provided to employers, while in Japan, it is promoted through softer policy instruments.
In many cases, sector-specific differences are clear. Positive outcomes are most common in legal, accounting, consultancy, technology/IT, marketing, and other creative fields. In contrast, the model proved more challenging to implement in hospitality, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare.
Social and Economic Benefits of the Four-Day Workweek
The UK trial project was monitored by Autonomy, an independent research organization. The results showed that 39 per cent of employees reported feeling less stressed, and the risk of burnout fell by 71 per cent. For 54 per cent of workers, balancing work and household responsibilities became easier, 60 per cent experienced improvements in reconciling paid work with caregiving duties, and 62 per cent found it simpler to combine work with their social lives.
From the employers’ perspective, the trial was equally successful, as company revenues did not decline; on the contrary, they actually increased by an average of 1.4 per cent, while resignation rates fell by 57 per cent. Tellingly, 15 per cent of employees claimed that no amount of money could persuade them to return to a five-day, 40-hour schedule.
‘15 per cent of employees claimed that no amount of money could persuade them to return to a five-day, 40-hour schedule’
In New Zealand, Perpetual Guardian also launched a pilot programme that delivered impressive results: the evaluation showed a 75 per cent per cent improvement in work-life balance and a 38 per cent reduction in stress levels, collectively driving a 20 per cent increase in productivity. These results suggest that the four-day workweek can be a powerful tool to enhance employees’ mental and physical well-being, reducing burnout and the number of sick days while improving the overall satisfaction with working conditions. Furthermore, most pilot projects mirror the UK results and prove that reduced hours do not compromise output; in fact, they increase productivity.
The Environmental Implications of Labour and Work Organization
Reducing the workweek can lead to energy savings, especially in the technology and IT sectors. A 2021 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology highlighted that maintaining and operating digital infrastructure is highly energy-intensive, with a significant carbon and ecological footprint. For example, a single data centre can consume as much energy as up to 50,000 households, while the carbon footprint of cloud storage rivals that of the entire aviation sector. Some nations have already used adjusted working schedules for energy conservation. In Sri Lanka, for instance, the government introduced a four-day model to address the energy price crisis by designating Wednesdays as non-working days for the public sector.
‘The carbon footprint of cloud storage rivals that of the entire aviation sector’
Another major environmental impact of on-site work is GHG emissions from commuting to the workplace. In the United States, transportation accounted for 28 per cent of total GHG emissions in 2022, largely from personal vehicles. In the country, the average one-way travel time was 27.2 minutes in 2024. From an environmental perspective, it is important to highlight that 69.2 per cent of the commuting workers travelled alone. In the European Union, the average one-way commuting time was 25 minutes, with the longest in Latvia (33 minutes), followed by Hungary and Luxembourg (29 minutes). The Spanish pilot project demonstrated that a four-day workweek reduced weekly commuting time by around 26 per cent—from 3.5 hours to 2.6 hours. The share of employees commuting by car dropped from 55.6 per cent to 52.5 per cent. Researchers also noted that the extra time enabled employees to engage in more sustainable activities like recycling, walking, and cycling.
Tyler Grange, an environmental consulting company, joined the UK pilot project and achieved a significant 21 per cent reduction in its carbon footprint, mainly because of the decreased commuting. Its employees, like those in the Spanish pilot, started to spend more time on environmentally friendly activities, including climate activism. Although it is impossible to guarantee that all employees will choose low-carbon leisure activities over high-emission options such as air travel, a 2014 study found that workers’ carbon footprints in North America and Europe are generally lower on weekends, while remaining stable in Eastern Asia. In summary, introducing four-day working weeks can simultaneously improve employee well-being, shrink companies’ climate footprints, and give workers more time for environmentally responsible activities.
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