Saving the planet on a Friday off: the 4-day workweek as a tool of EU climate policy
“I want to say, in all seriousness, that (…) the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.”
Bertrand Russell
In Praise of Idleness (1935)
This Policy Brief was written by the authors for futurEU 2023, an initiative supported by the Jacques Delors Centre, the Hertie School and the CIVICA Alliance. This year’s competition topic was: “Climate Change and Societal Transformation: How Can EU Policy Advance Climate Protection and Sustainability in a Turbulent World?”.
The Brief was presented during the Semi-finals at Hertie School in Berlin and then selected for the Final round, earning the People’s choice Award.
The energy crisis makes reducing our energy consumption more necessary than ever.
Global warming is the foundational challenge of our era. In a world where international cooperation seems ever more weakened, the European Union strives to be the first climate-neutral international actor (European Commission 2019). Starting from the adoption of the European Green Deal, EU institutions kickstarted arguably the most ambitious continental framework of climate policies to date.
While achieving sustainable energy production is the cornerstone of climate policy, the war in Ukraine shifted the attention of political and economic actors towards the other side of the market. Since February 2022, Europe has been trying to reduce its energy consumption (European Parliament 2022). Amidst a cost-of-living crisis, policies to compress energy demand risk widening the gap between climate policy and those who fear paying the costs of transition – working class, car commuters and rural dwellers. Reducing energy consumption is highly unpopular, especially when you ask ordinary people to do it.
Recent trials shed light on a viable policy option that might reduce the workforce’s carbon impact in this landscape. It is the 4-day workweek, with fixed monthly salaries and fixed daily working hours. In this policy brief, we advocate for a continental, EU-sponsored trial of the 4-day workweek as a tool for climate policy – with substantial social and welfare gains as a by-product.
Office closed, less commuting: the 4-day workweek makes us more sustainable.
Despite the wide-ranging scope of EU talks and action on climate and social policy, reduction of working hours has been repeatedly neglected by European institutions. The whole Green Deal makes no mention of working hours as an area of intervention (EEB 2022).
Direct environmental benefits of a 4-day workweek are almost self-explanatory. For an extra day, firms are closed and employees avoid commuting. Workplaces and workers alike reduce their energy consumption. Early empirical research supports this statement. Across countries, cross-sectional studies have shown that reducing working hours consistently achieves considerable environmental gains. A 1% decrease in working hours is associated with a 1.3% carbon footprint reduction (Knight 2013), a 1.2% decrease in ecological footprint (Hayden 2009), and a 0.8% fall in greenhouse gas emissions (Nassèn 2015).
More recent evidence is making extensive use of 4-day workweek trials. Despite many of them being still ongoing, initial reports are optimistic. A 2019 trial by Microsoft Japan reported a staggering 23% reduction in energy usage. Coote (2021) reports a 10.5% decrease in energy consumption by Utah state-department buildings that took part in a 4-day workweek experiment. On a more general account, Csala (2020) suggests this initiative might reduce emissions by 24%.
The 4-day workweek also significantly affects commuting patterns. In 2022, the 4 Day Week (4DW) Campaign conducted the biggest pilot trial to date, involving 61 firms and more than 2,900 employees in the UK: they found a 10% decrease in all commuting activities during the pilot period (BBC 2023). Smaller trials held in highly car-dependent USA show commuting activities dropped as much as 27% (Schor et al. 2022). This highlights an important feature of the quest towards flexible work arrangements: infrastructurally disadvantaged territories have the most to gain.
Together, energy and commuting gains may amount to outstanding benefits. A report by 4DW and Platform London (2021) estimates that a widespread switch to the 4-day workweek by 2025 would reduce UK emissions by 21.3%. It is equivalent to taking 27 million cars off the road – almost the entire UK fleet.
Unfortunately, not all that glitters is gold. The environmental benefits of the 4-day workweek could be easily reversed if workers chose to spend the free extra day in highly-polluting activities, like taking airplane rides or car trips. However, existing evidence suggests this is not likely to happen: environmental consciousness has recently made several leaps forward. In a 2020 survey by the Boston Consulting Group (Kachaner et al., 2020), 70% of people reported being more mindful of their ecological footprint than before. During the pandemic, sustainable habits became more common (Bulb, 2020) and research on working hours suggests that working less may lead to a more sustainable behaviour within the household (Fitzgerald, 2018). Workers surveyed by Walker and Fontinha (2019) reported they would mostly employ their extra day in low-emissions activities such as staying with their families, home-cooking and volunteering.
These results may be explained by two factors. First, households are reluctant to sustain the burden of high gas and electricity bills. Second, more free time would allow households to take ownership of their consumption choices, and to materialize the gains of the emerging common sustainable mindset.
Lower stress levels, stronger work-life balance: the 4-day workweek makes us happier.
Covid-19 was a watershed moment for western work culture. Across the developed world, many are asking that work does not prevail over their well-being, fueling the striking wave of voluntary quits that economists are calling the Great Resignation (Ellerbeck, 2022). when asked if they ever perceived to be close to work-related burnout, 45 out of 100 Frenchmen answered yes. This figure is the lowest among European economies (Statista, 2021).
Evidence (Lewis et al., 2023) shows that the 4-day workweek helps: employees involved in the most recent UK trial – the biggest yet – report being 39% less stressed, with 71% feeling farther from burnout than before. Likewise, they report lower anxiety levels, less fatigue and better sleep. Both physical and mental health appear to be improved.
Working less can also give a considerable push towards a more equitable distribution of family responsibilities, supporting progressive gender norms and incentivizing female employment. 60% of participants report achieving stronger harmony between work and family, better balancing of domestic responsibilities and greater satisfaction in their romantic relationships. These benefits explain part of the seemingly high societal support for such a policy: a GoodHire (2021) survey shows that 83% of respondents would prefer a shorter workweek.
Productivity gains are a necessity. This calls firms to shake up their own production process, and some can do it better than others.
Reaping the benefits of working less is only feasible if firms manage to increase their hourly productivity. To preserve purchasing power, hourly salaries will have to increase. If productivity does not increase to match them, an unpredictable number of low-margin firms would face the risk of bankruptcy. Strong, widespread reductions in working hours without substantial efforts at increasing productivity would be a great idea for a quick recession. That is why the 4-day workweek is still at an experimental stage.
For firms, entering such trials means trying to change for the better – to achieve the same results, in 8 hours less. Turns out, they are managing wonderfully. Firms participating in the UK 2022 trial increased revenues by 1.4% over the six-months period. Relative to a comparison period, revenue growth is 35% higher. (Lewis et al., 2023). A similar project with US and Ireland firms found an 8.14% increase in revenue, or a 37.55% growth increase (Schor et al., 2022). Microsoft Japan’s 2019 trial reported a 40% increase in hourly productivity, along with a reduction in time taken off by employees (Kari, 2019). A trial in Utah State departments reported unvaried user satisfaction with public services (Coote, 2021), while a Japanese architectural design firm found that their teams were 7.6% more productive (Shangguan, 2021).
Still, we cannot say if others would do the same. There is no one-stop approach to productivity increase: every firm needs to find its own way to reorganize its own production. UK trial organizers spent 2 months on in-company training and best-practices sharing for an effective transition. They ended up developing tailored firm-level plans of adaptation – including taking different days off and partial working hours reductions. Companies are not made equal: smaller, nimbler organizations are much simpler to reorganize than big and stratified companies. While knowledge-intensive activities rely on few physical inputs, most firms must coordinate with the rest of the economy – which works on Fridays.
Firms self-select into most trials. Existing evidence is thus restricted to a well-equipped sample of firms, which hinders scholars’ ability to assess the program’s feasibility at a larger scale. It is simply impossible to know, based on existing evidence, if wider swaths of our economies could be able to implement it. There is a need for more trials, involving firms that would not autonomously choose to participate.
We call for an EU-level continental trial of the 4-day workweek, insuring against possible productivity losses and targeting ill-equipped firms.
The time has come to broaden the scope of 4-day workweek trials beyond private and national attempts. We call European MPs to propose an EU Preparatory Action with the following characteristics:
Sponsored by the EU Commission, under the leadership of the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. This would provide firms with the Commission’s internal expertise, to provide the proper guidance for tailored organizational change;
Diffused throughout the internal market, as to ‘plant the seed’ of sustainable working time reductions equitably across all Member States (MS). Specifically, we propose to include at least one firm from each MS;
Providing financial insurance against productivity losses: this is crucial to ensure participation by sceptic firms – those most likely to struggle with 4-day workweek implementation;
Targeting multinational corporations, which proved to be among the most recalcitrant towards 4-day workweeks due to their stratified organizational structures and consolidated corporate culture. Specifically, we propose to include at least 5 European multinational corporations;
Targeting infrastructurally disadvantaged areas, where environmental and well-being gains are stronger, working in cooperation with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Specifically, we suggest a 20% quota of firms from such areas.
European institutions are better equipped to broaden the scope of 4-day workweek trials beyond the national or sectoral level. They can foster knowledge-sharing strategies and best practices across trial participants, within existing efforts at harmonizing labour standards throughout MS. They work in closer contact with European multinational corporations, thus managing to better cater to their specific needs. Perhaps most importantly, EU intervention mobilizes European political capital, making sustainable working-hour reduction a truly European strategy.
Conclusion
The 4-day workweek has the potential to positively impact two of the most relevant issues of our time: saving the world climate, and making working life serve personal well-being. All this, while bridging the gap between climate policy and working classes.
As everything worthwhile, it is not easily done. We call for EU institutions to try.
REFERENCES:
4 Day Week Campaign & Platform London. (2021). Stop the clock: The environmental benefits of a shorter working week
A. Vandeplas, I. Vanyolos, M Vigani, L.Vogel (2022). The Possible Implications of the Green Transition for the EU Labour Market. Discussion Paper 176, European Commission
Coote, A., Harper, A., & Stirling, A. (2021). The case for a four-day week. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Culot, M. and Wiese, K. (2022). Reimagining work for a just transition. EEB, European Environmental Bureau, Brussels.
D. Csala (2020). Sparking Change: electricity consumption, carbon emissions and working time. Autonomy.
Kari P.(2019). Microsoft Japan tested a four-day work week and productivity jumped by 40%. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft-japan-four-day-work-week-productivity
Lewis, K., Schor, J. & Frayne, D. (2023). UK's 4 Day Week Pilot Results Report 2023, 4 Day Week Global. United Kingdom.
R. Shangguan & J. Devaro, O. Hideo, (2021). Enhancing Team Productivity through Shorter Working Hours: Evidence from the Great Recession. Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
Russell, Bertrand (1935). In Praise of Idleness: And Other Essays. Routledge.
Schor, Juliet B., Wen Fan, Orla Kelly, Guolin Gu, Tatiana Bezdenezhnykh, Niamh Bridson-Hubbard (2022). “The Four Day Week: Assessing Global Trials of Reduced Work Time with No Reduction in Pay,” Four Day Week Global, Auckland, NZ.
Stefan Ellerbeck (2022). The Great Resignation is not over: A fifth of workers plan to quit in 2022. WEF https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/the-great-resignation-is-not-over/
Sutton-Parker, J. (2021). Determining commuting greenhouse gas emissions abatement achieved by information technology enabled remote working. Procedia Computer Science, 191, 296–303.