Australian Companies Set To Trial Four-Day Working Week

At least 20 Australian and New Zealand companies have agreed to participate in a four-day working week trial. 

The pilot comes shortly after a number of UK businesses participated in a similar trial with their pilot launching earlier in the week. 

Th UK’s trial is on a much larger scale with 70 companies taking part in the pilot and thousands of employees reducing their working hours.

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North America are also taking part in the trial with 38 companies cutting their working week down to four days. 

The trial is being orchestrated by not-for-profit New Zealand advocacy group ‘4 Day Week Global’. 

Australia and New Zealand’s pilot is set to launch in August of this year, with 20 companies opting to work one less day every week. 

Employees participating in the trial will see no change to their wages but will in turn be required to maintain the same levels of productivity as they would in a five-day working week.

This means workers will need to put 100 percent into an 80 percent working week known as the 100:80:100 working model.

So far, companies participating in the pilot include health and well-being businesses along with communications, technology, marketing agencies, banks retail and more.

A team of researchers from Cambridge university to measure the productivity of employees to establish whether a four-day week is sustainable with results set to be released by the end of 2023.

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