Hearing the arguments for a four-day work week

Some people, I’m told, don’t consider journalism a glamorous or exciting profession but I was dispatched to a cardboard-box factory on the outskirts of Wigan this week so that shows what they know.

Belmont Packaging, on the sprawling Hindley Green industrial estate, was actually terrific.

I was visiting because, for the last two years, factory floor staff there have worked a four-day week. Every Thursday at 5pm, the place shuts down until Monday.

It’s no easy life, it should be said. The workers still graft out 38 hours. But, reckons boss Kate Hulley, the three-day break improves mental and physical health, reduces the likelihood of burn-out and allows for a better work-life balance – the key to happiness for many of us.

“By Monday night,” one worker told me, “you’re already on the downhill to the weekend. Tuesday is hump day.”

Four-day weeks are – and this is why I was there – becoming increasingly common across the UK. More businesses are experimenting with the concept, including Morrisons supermarket and the Durham-based Atom bank. The Scottish government is currently developing a pilot scheme to trial the idea there.

In short, this could be the future. I have this week become convinced that such a shortened week is a win not just for employees but for both employers and the wider economy too.

Almost all available research shows that it results in more productive – and more profitable – companies, while anecdotal evidence suggests both staff turn-over and sickness decrease. The sudden boom in leisure time would almost certainly broaden the economy and likely result in more jobs.

Such a major social shift would not be easy, of course. It raises a million questions. Should it apply to schools? Could it risk exacerbating existing inequalities? Might it become an excuse for stagnating wages?

Yet the results – a society where greater emphasis is placed on hobbies, on culture, on families; ultimately on joy – is surely worth working through such complications.

A five-day week has been the standard now for almost a century. Isn’t it time for a different approach to work – and to life?

Yours,

Colin Drury

North of England correspondent