{"id":7079014,"date":"2026-10-07T06:50:25","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7079014"},"modified":"2026-10-07T06:50:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:50:25","slug":"one-year-of-a-4-day-workweek-what-we-learned-and-what-we-did-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7079014","title":{"rendered":"One Year of a 4-Day Workweek: What We Learned, and What We Did After"},"content":{"rendered":"


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On April 1, 2025, ACE launched a one-year trial of a 4-day, 32-hour workweek. The trial has now concluded, every major success metric was met or exceeded, and our Board of Directors has approved a 32-hour week default as permanent policy. Here\u2019s what we did, what we found, and why we think other organizations might want to consider it too.<\/i><\/p>\n

Why we tried this<\/h2>\n

ACE\u2019s guiding principles include seeking evidence, doing the most good we can, and being compassionate. So, when multiple people flagged the same idea within a few months of each other \u2014 that a shorter workweek might make us both more effective and more desirable to work for \u2014 we took it seriously enough to spend 40+ hours researching it before trialing it.<\/p>\n

The evidence we found was consistent and more positive than we expected. The UK\u2019s national pilot<\/a>, one of the earliest and largest trials of its kind, found a 71% drop in burnout and a 65% reduction in sick days among nearly 3,000 workers, and 92% of participating companies chose to continue the policy after the trial ended. Across the broader body of research<\/a> compiled by 4 Day Week Global, the pattern holds: shorter weeks, at full pay, tend to produce steady or improved output alongside sharply better staff wellbeing.<\/p>\n

We also had a practical motivation. ACE\u2019s 2024 compensation review found that our leadership salaries sat 16\u201324% below movement baselines, and our budget didn\u2019t allow for the raises that would close that gap. A 32-hour week at full pay is, in effect, a raise: research from 4 Day Week Global<\/a> found that a majority of employees would choose a 4-day week over a comparable pay increase. \u201cWhen asked how much additional pay they\u2019d require in their next job to go back to five days, 32.8% of employees said 26\u201350% more, 12.2% would require more than 50%, and over one in ten (13.8%) said no amount of money would induce them to go back to five days.\u201d For an organization competing for talent against better-funded employers, that\u2019s a powerful, yet affordable retention tool.<\/p>\n

How we ran the pilot<\/h2>\n

To prepare for the trial, we spent nearly nine months in consultation with Dr. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang<\/a>, who helped us prepare staff, set expectations, and build a curriculum for the transition. Before launch, every team audited its meetings and business-as-usual work to cut anything that wasn\u2019t mission-critical, and we invested in AI tools and automation to reclaim staff time. Every team ran a pre-mortem to identify likely failure points in advance.<\/p>\n

We set four ground rules for the trial:<\/p>\n