Author Talks: Is it time for a four-day workweek?

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Emily Adeyanju chats with journalist Jared Lindzon about Do More in Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek (Harvard Business Review Press, January 2026), coauthored with Joe O’Connor, CEO of Work Time Revolution. Lindzon explores why the five-day workweek no longer fits today’s economic context. Drawing on evidence from companies worldwide, he shows how, in an AI-driven economy, a four-day workweek can help companies strengthen their competitive advantage, performance, and the health of their teams. An edited version of the conversation follows.

Why is the standard five-day workweek not ideal for an AI future?

The five-day standard was adopted from an industrial era and an economy that no longer exists. Like a lot of our workplace norms today, we started doing things a certain way around the turn of the last century, during the Industrial Revolution. And a lot of those workplace practices just stuck.

What was revealing was that the five-day workweek wasn’t designed intentionally or thoughtfully. There wasn’t an objective analysis of the optimal balance between work and rest, nor was there a scientific decision that the current five-two split was ideal. The standard was brought about over a period of roughly 100 years of lobbying between production, manufacturers, and their employees.

It came down to mostly religious reasons. We have Sundays off to accommodate the Christian Sabbath and Saturdays off to accommodate the Jewish Sabbath.

When you consider whether the five-day week is optimal for our current needs or for the future of AI, you realize that it was created for an economy that prized presence and measured productivity in hours. In the factory days, there was only one way that a worker would spend an hour. It was standardized down to every last movement. But today, in our knowledge economy, there are almost infinite ways to spend an hour at work, and not all of them add value to the organization in the same way. As we enter this AI era, we see two very important reasons why the four-day workweek is beneficial to organizations at this particular moment.

The first is the reality that there has been a surprising amount of AI resistance. Workers don’t want to adopt the technology. Business leaders want to adopt AI, and they see it as a competitive necessity. But the people on the front lines, who will ultimately be responsible for the success of those integrations, aren’t motivated; they believe they’re training robot replacements. At best, they’re making the business slightly more stable and competitive, but they’re putting in a lot of effort to adopt new ways of working to increase shareholder value or improve metrics that don’t change their lives in any meaningful way.

The four-day workweek is an opportunity to rally people around the shared mission of making that AI integration successful by sharing in the rewards, not necessarily in the monetary sense, but in the reward of time. We find that organizations adopting a four-day workweek are significantly more successful in their AI adoption efforts than those operating on a standard five-day schedule.

Second, it’s an acknowledgement that we’re moving toward a world that prizes our most human traits. Again, one of the legacies of the Industrial Revolution was the idea that we were prized for our most robotic traits: showing up on time, punching a clock, and completing repetitive tasks.

These are attributes of machines that can perform those repetitive tasks much better in the modern era. I interview people across myriad industries: legal, accounting, consulting, and financial sectors. They say that AI causes them to lean more on their quintessential human traits.

Tasks that used to be part of their job that can be automated have been automated, but creating more time for their most human skills has become increasingly important. Research shows that these more unique tasks—the ability to think out of the box, communicate, work with clients, and establish relationships—are ones one cannot just “power through” without rest. We do better with creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, innovation, and adaptability when we’ve had more time away from work to dream up better ideas.

For those two primary reasons, we find that the four-day workweek is a better fit for our AI future than the five-day reality that we have adopted as a legacy of the Industrial Revolution.

What are the origins of the four-day workweek concept?

There have been a lot of independent experiments on the four-day workweek over the years. Municipalities and countries have tried it in various forms, as have private businesses. Joe O’Connor, my coauthor, is a pioneer in this space. In 2018, he was an early organizer of pilot programs for the four-day workweek, bringing together roughly 20 companies in Ireland to complete a four-day workweek trial. He brought in outside consulting and educational institutions to study and measure the results.

After the pilot program in Ireland, he began conducting pilots globally. There was a larger one in North America, another one in the United Kingdom, and another in Australia. When we began the book, we had a sufficient body of evidence and enough real-world case studies to draw conclusions from those experiments. The book shares the results of those efforts.

Atlassian’s State of Teams 2024 report found that 65 percent of knowledge workers believe it’s more important to quickly respond to messages than to make progress on key priorities. Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index found that knowledge workers spend 100 hours in unnecessary meetings. They spend over 200 hours on duplicative work, and over 350 hours just talking about work, doing check-ins, or similar activities each year. As a result of all of those hours spent on things that don’t really move the needle on productivity, 88 percent say that they’re falling behind on time-sensitive projects and major initiatives.

The four-day workweek, more than an opportunity to give people more rest, is an incentive to have them focus on how they spend their work hours and to optimize them for accomplishing the business’s objectives, rather than simply showing up for a prescribed number of hours and looking busy.

Compared with other countries, the US is an outlier in the correlation between hours worked and economic performance. Can you explain?

One of the reasons that a Nobel Prize–winning economist, whom we interviewed, predicted that the four-day workweek would become the norm is because of compelling data that the OECD published in a 2022 study.

The study breaks down the total average working hours by country, accounting for vacation days, maternity leave, part-time work, and seasonal work. There was a very striking reverse correlation between economic performance and hours worked.

We often think putting in more hours results in better economic performance, but the OECD data painted a very clear picture of the exact opposite. In all but one place, there is a very direct reverse correlation. The more hours a country puts in, the worse its economic performance.

On a number of measures—GDP per capita, total GDP, and competitiveness ranking—the only major outlier in this entire global trend is the United States. It has the strongest economy in the OECD, of course, but it is the only G7 nation that works more than the OECD. Americans work an average of 34.5 hours per week compared with the OECD average of 32 hours per week. There are many factors to explain [this phenomenon in the United States]. A primary one is the historical reliance on unions to fight for time off and the waning influence of those unions. There’s cultural aversion. There’s also the Protestant work ethic and a long and proud history of being valued based on how much you work, and a lot of emphasis on sacrificing our personal needs for our work.

With a four-day workweek, how can businesses still serve clients effectively and meet productivity benchmarks? How does the model benefit employees?

We actually devote an entire chapter to the topic, entitled “But What About My Clients?,” because we are often asked that. It is top of mind for organizational leaders when they think about the possibility of reducing the workweek. In the book, we profiled companies that have taken a lot of creative solutions to this very challenge.

The challenge feels a lot bigger than it proves to be in reality, because we think we’re unreachable if we’re not at work. But that’s not really the truth anymore. When people ask us, “What happens if a client needs us on a Friday, and that’s our day off?” we ask, “What would you do if they needed you on a Saturday for an emergency?” You might stop whatever you’re doing, answer an email on your phone, or use your laptop if it’s really important.

After moving to a four-day workweek, many companies ask one staff member—on a rotating schedule—to be on call for that day. The on-call employee isn’t working but is close enough to a computer to check the company email to ensure that there aren’t emergencies. Some organizations find that effective. Others have customized the four-day workweek to take off a half day on Monday morning and a half day on Friday afternoon to ensure coverage.

Often, companies that make the switch realize that it is not the challenge it was perceived to be and that the benefits to employees primarily relate to mental health and well-being. Research from Joe’s pilot showed how people spend that time.

Some travel more or spend more time with family. The most popular thing to do on that day off is to take care of personal administrative tasks, such as laundry, groceries, and household chores, to yield days off on the weekend.

Working parents actually talk about how it’s life-changing to have one day of the week that is neither dedicated to watching their children nor dedicated to their jobs. They can reengage in hobbies that they had to leave behind years ago, which can ultimately make them not just happier people but also better employees with improved morale.

Each of these pilot programs, studied by third-party research organizations, found that workers experienced dramatic reductions in work–life conflicts, overall stress, and significant improvements in well-being. We find that in law, healthcare, and nonprofit organizations, for example, that struggle with absenteeism, mental health challenges, and morale, the four-day workweek can be a huge benefit and substantially helps people who are in emotionally taxing positions and industries. They are able to spend more time with their families, more time exercising, and more time in nature.

Some are able to spend more time volunteering. Things we may have associated with past generations that we no longer have the time for, such as community participation, volunteering, and religious participation, haven’t gone by the wayside in the modern world necessarily because people haven’t prioritized them as much. Rather, work has become such a time drain. The fact that we’re not only working the five days we’re on the clock but are now on call all the time takes away the opportunity to do things that people find meaningful and important. Often what goes first are those things that we would want to encourage as a society.

What steps should leaders take to initiate the process and avoid guardrails?

This initiative has a very high success rate, but it cannot be implemented alone. Ultimately, the companies that are unsuccessful are those that do it unilaterally from the top, without a lot of buy-in.

Engage with your staff. This process takes months and requires first engaging with your staff candidly about what it would take to make it a success, and where productivity stays the same or increases despite reduced work time. A lot of people might be concerned about being forced to do five days’ worth of work in four, which we do not support, or they might be concerned that they’ve built relationships with clients and are unreachable on that day off. Ironically, we find that the workaholics are the biggest resisters, even though they need the break.

If you just ask your staff to be more productive for the sake of the business, they’re probably not going to be very motivated to make that extra effort to do so. But if you share in the rewards, if you say, “You can have 20 percent of your week back if you find ways to be 20 percent more productive or more,” you’ll find a lot of enthusiasm and great ideas for that effort.

Establish certain benchmarks for success. We emphasize the importance of understanding nonnegotiable metrics and red lines. What are the metrics that the organization relies on for its success?

For some, the metrics—and they might differ between teams and across the organization—are customer service satisfaction levels. For others, they are employee satisfaction, returns, and bottom lines. [The goal is] understanding your current benchmark and then seeking to either match or improve it while reducing work time.

We encourage organizations not to make this a permanent policy. Don’t put it in your employee handbook, or it loses its magic as an ongoing effort to improve productivity and find new ways to do things better. We encourage organizations to present it to their staff as an ongoing incentive that needs to be earned contingent on reaching certain business performance metrics.

We devote an entire chapter to implementation and provide a list of conditions that dramatically improve success: high trust in the organization, psychological safety, and few layers of bureaucracy. These are markers of a healthy organization and very important precursors to reducing work time.

Avoid trying to do it all at once. We are not shy about profiling companies in the book that have implemented the four-day workweek for a period of time, then reversed the policy temporarily when productivity began to decrease slightly. Depending on whether workers reach those benchmarks in the next quarter, the companies can either increase or decrease [the workweek] again. This is not meant to be a vacation day that’s afforded to staff as a perk. Rather, it’s a weekly perk that is contingent on achieving specific business metrics.

Many organizations that have found success with the four-day workweek take a few months to implement new ways of working, establish benchmarks, employ new tools and technologies, and then begin to gradually chip away at working hours. After those initial steps, it becomes a much easier transition that’s much more likely to succeed.

The pandemic showed leaders that employees could maintain productivity while reframing their approach to work. Are work redesign efforts for a shorter week similar? Why or why not?

The pandemic gave us an opportunity to do things differently. We haven’t needed to be in the office. Physical presence as a staple of work is another long-lasting legacy of the Industrial Revolution. We’ve long had the tools and technologies [to work remotely]. I’ve been working remotely for approximately 13 years. People have been doing it much longer than I have, but what was lacking was a willingness to experiment because of the inertia, the idea that “This is how it’s always been done.” The pandemic gave us permission to question whether the way it’s always been done is the best way forward.

And at the same time, there were metrics and data suggesting that effective remote and hybrid work were possible long before the pandemic forced people to experiment with them. That inspired me personally to explore what else is statistically proven to be an achievable way of improving organizational performance and individual lives. The four-day workweek stood out for me.

Remote work and hybrid work are about space, and the four-day workweek is about time. Work doesn’t need to happen in a specific, designated place, nor does it need to happen at a very specific, designated time. We have lots of tools to work asynchronously. Changing the space in which we work can have significant advantages and mutual benefits for workers, employers, and society at large. The four-day workweek represents the same benefit for time.

A four-day workweek may not work for all companies. What other work time reduction efforts can leaders explore?

There are various models for reducing work time. Many organizations begin with a summer Friday program and then extend that year-round. They may offer every other Friday as a day off before making the switch to a four-day workweek. As mentioned, we profiled one organization that takes a half day on Mondays and Fridays instead of a full day, to give coverage across the five days.

The day off isn’t a requirement. Employees can continue to work, especially if it’s crunch time and they fear falling behind unless they accomplish something on that fifth day. For many organizations that switch to the four-day workweek, staff are working an hour or two here and there while still having the majority of the day off. That flexibility allows a clear schedule on that day for heads-down work if it must be done.

Staff can give the business a little extra when the business needs it, because they’re getting something in return. Building in flexibility and experimenting with different work structures can actually make this model fit in places where it may not seem to be a natural fit.

Employees, even ones who work swiftly and strategically, often get mixed messages about productivity. Can you explain the ‘performance punishment’ and ‘detachment paradox’ concepts?

Like many of the topics in this discussion, this is another outdated legacy of the Industrial Revolution, where we equate presence with effort and productivity. Performance punishment is a term we use to acknowledge that people who get their work done quickly and to a high standard are often given more work to fill the hours they’ve saved. If those same people were to take their time, work through the lunch break, the evening, and the weekend, and forego vacation days to get that same project done, they’re more likely to be praised for their dedication. Again, the measurement isn’t the actual output; it’s the hours spent. There is a disconnect between the output we’re hoping that the worker can provide and the number of hours that they spend working.

Another important concept is the detachment paradox. I’ve interviewed researchers who published a paper based on interviews with managers surveyed about staff and time off. Almost unanimously, most of those managers believed that their staff returned from their time off more relaxed, energized, and productive. However, when asked how they would evaluate staff who don’t answer emails while on vacation or use an out-of-office message, those same managers ranked those staff as less committed to the organization and, ultimately, less worthy of promotion. That is the core of the detachment paradox.

There is a broad acknowledgement that time away from work is actually healthy. However, we’ve been so programmed to see physical presence and hours as a proxy for dedication that we penalize people for taking time off. It’s actually one of the reasons why the majority of Americans don’t take the entirety of their allotted vacation days. They feel as though they’ll be punished if they do so.

Since taking more time to complete projects is more likely to be rewarded, and since forgoing time off is also considered a value, we’ve created a world where we fill time with busy work that doesn’t actually improve the organization’s performance. Instead, it drains the employee’s energy and well-being and ultimately leads to mental health challenges and burnout.

Workers feel like they’re being held hostage in meetings, and then they have to rush back to their desks to actually complete the work that matters. They participate in meetings whose content could have been best delivered via email. Employees end up trying to complete productive, heads-down work by navigating time slots that have been usurped for things that they don’t feel is necessary. That reduces their motivation.

What does research show about how the four-day workweek affects women differently from men?

It is not uncommon for caregivers, primarily women, to ask for a reduced schedule while they’re raising kids and taking care of elderly parents. In fact, my coauthor, Joe, entered this field after conducting a research study for a public union in Ireland.

Joe analyzed staff members who had opted for a reduced schedule—a four-day rotation—and were given 20 percent less pay. Yet when he looked into the data, the staff members on reduced schedules were actually producing the same output as their colleagues who worked five-day schedules. Joe realized there might be a story behind the data, and that insight launched his journey.

There is significant research and real-world experience that show women are much more likely to work part time. They’re also much more likely to be primary caregivers. We find that when they are given shorter-schedule accommodation, they’re also likely to be paid less in the short term, given less responsibility, and granted fewer special projects and advancement opportunities.

Yet when the entire organization works on a reduced schedule, people who have more responsibilities at home and who need to reduce their working hours to manage those needs are on the same playing field as everyone else. Also, we find that men who work reduced schedules participate a lot more at home. The UK pilot showed that when men [also] have 20 percent reduction in work time, women spent 13 percent more time looking after their children. Men spent nearly double that time—27 percent more—looking after children. Using that spare time to chip in more at home makes everybody’s lives a little easier.

In fact, multiple jurisdictions, including some in Asia–Pacific, are seeking to implement reduced schedules to improve birth rates. The policies aim to better balance domestic responsibilities and make it easier for parents to raise their families while also having full-time, meaningful careers—without being seen as less of a contributor for trying to have both.

What does the four-day workweek mean for recruitment and retention?

Overall, the four-day workweek provides many benefits for individuals, including societal impact, such as family planning, balancing the scales for women in the workplace, and sustaining the environment. As organizations look to bring more staff back to the office, the shorter workweek can help balance the scales for the return-to-office mandate that staff may not like and assuage the resulting hit to staff morale.

Also, the four-day workweek is a strong employee attraction and retention tool. In the current labor market, there’s significant competition for certain skills, especially for midsize tech firms competing with tech giants for the same talent. Those smaller companies can’t outcompete on salary, but offering a shorter workweek gives them competitive advantage, either for talent they’re trying to recruit or for high-performing talent already in their organization who have options elsewhere.

That’s a massive opportunity that doesn’t require outspending the competition.