“We hope that they’ll engage with the evidence,” said 4 Day Week Campaign director Joe Ryle.
He told HR magazine: “Keir Starmer has talked about going back to evidence-based policy-making. The Tories ignored the evidence on a four-day week, and we’re hoping Labour will pay attention to the – extremely positive – evidence.”
When South Cambridgeshire Council launched its four-day week trial, the then-local government minister Lee Rowley ordered it to “end its experiment immediately,” citing concerns over value for money.
The Department for Levelling Up had likewise threatened to withhold funds from local governments that attempted to adopt the practice.
Read more: Four-day week trial hailed a success for businesses and workers
In the end, South Cambridgeshire’s experiment proved a success, cutting staff turnover 39%, and boosting the number of planning applications processed by 15%.
“It’s going to be up to us to show that a four-day week works,” said Ryle.
“Councils across the country are looking at the Cambridge trial – and their drop in costs and turnover. We’re hoping that the new Labour cabinet, several of whom have spoken positively about a four-day week in the past, will view it in a more sympathetic light.”
Labour front-benchers Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister, and Ed Milliband, energy and net-zero secretary, have both previously engaged with the idea of a four-day week. Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, were reported by The Guardian as being interested in the idea of a four-day week too.
Launching its second large-scale pilot programme in early November, the 4 Day Week Campaign will this time work with flexible working consultancy Timewise to experiment with other forms of flexible work, including flexible start and finish times, the nine-day fortnight, and compressed hours.
Read more: Nine-day fortnight proves more popular than four-day week
Recruitment firm MRL Consulting adopted the four-day week five years ago.
David Stone, MRL’s CEO, told HR magazine that while MRL had seen fantastic results, the four-day week was not something that every organisation would necessarily benefit from – and that Labour might be understandably reluctant to experiment with huge public-sector organisations’ working practices.
He said: “The positive impact it has had on the productivity and the mental and physical wellbeing of our team has been outstanding, with dramatic decreases in staff turnover, burnout and sick leave becoming the norm. Recruitment, like many sales roles, is exquisitely well placed to benefit from the four-day week.”
This, he said, was a benefit of recruitment measuring success by its outputs – such as sales or interviews, rather than inputs, like time spent working.
“I would be fascinated to see a study of how a four-day week could benefit a stressful, demanding role like nursing. Yes, you would be increasing your salary bill by 20%, but how much would be saved in terms of reduced turnover, fewer agency staff, and fewer signed off sick with stress, anxiety, or depression?”
He added that while it was fair to assume that Labour would be more favourable to the concept of a four-day week – it was in Labour’s 2019 manifesto, though notably not the 2024 manifesto – it would be a mistake to imagine that translating into any kind of country-wide implementation.
“I think the best we can hope for is that our new government pays lip service to its benefits, which will help the movement garner more attention.
“Ultimately, I think it should be left to business owners to make their own decisions in the interest of their businesses and their employees; it’s not a decision that should or could be made on a whim, and requires an enormous amount of work to get right.
“In a time when money is scarce and we can’t even pay our junior doctor’s fairly, it’d be a brave government who’d increase the public sector salary bill by 20% as an ‘experiment’, no matter how well intended.”
HR magazine contacted the Ministry for Housing, Communities, and Local Government for comment.
