Would you fancy a 4 day week on a 5 day salary? But for a four-day week on full pay to work across the economy, employers will need to see productivity gains. Workers will need to create the services and products in four days that they were creating in five to make enough money to pay a full week's wages. That kind of productivity growth has proved an intractable challenge for the UK economy. It has fallen behind many other rich nations in the amount of value created per worker in recent years, with competing explanations as to why and how that might be fixed. While most of the companies taking part said they were happy with productivity and performance outcomes, only 23 provided financial data covering revenues, and that showed revenue had broadly stayed the same over the six months of the trial. But of the 61 companies that took part, 56 said they would continue with the four-day week, at least for now, of whom 18 said the policy was a permanent change.
