A six-month trial of the four-day workweek at 41 local employers has ended, and 34 of them say they are making it permanent. The participants ranged from a 6-person accounting office to a manufacturer with more than 200 workers, and the results surprised even some of the managers who signed up expecting to quit halfway through.
Researchers at the state university, who tracked the pilot, found that revenue held steady while sick days fell by nearly a third. Employees reported less burnout and better sleep, and several companies said job applications rose sharply once word got around that they offered a shorter week.
How the pilot worked
The trial began last spring, organized by the regional chamber of commerce with help from the university’s business school. Employers agreed to a simple rule: workers would keep 100 percent of their pay while working about 80 percent of their previous hours, as long as productivity held up. Each company could design its own schedule, and the researchers met with managers monthly to collect data and share what was working.
Participants included engineering firms, marketing agencies, a credit union, two restaurants, a dental practice, several nonprofits and a small software company. Roughly 1,800 employees took part. Researchers tracked revenue, customer complaints, sick days, turnover and employee surveys before, during and after the trial.
“We tried to make the pilot as practical as possible,” said Dr. Rebecca Hale, a professor of management who led the research team. “These are not giant tech companies with endless resources. They are local businesses that have to meet payroll every two weeks. That is what makes the results interesting.”
What changed
Most companies cut meetings in half and moved routine updates to written notes. Several closed on Fridays; others staggered days off so customers always reached someone. Managers said the most important step was not choosing the day off but deciding what work could simply stop.
Many firms audited their calendars in the first two weeks and found that standing meetings, internal reports and long email threads were consuming large parts of the week. Some replaced daily check-ins with a short written update. Others set aside two or three hours each morning as quiet time, when no meetings could be scheduled and phones went to voicemail.
We didn’t work less. We wasted less.
Tom Brennan, owner of a 30-person engineering firm
Brennan said his firm moved from five days of scattered meetings to a single planning session on Monday and a short wrap-up on Thursday afternoon. Engineers who used to spend half their day in conference rooms now had long stretches to focus on design work. “I was sure our project deadlines would slip,” he said. “Instead we finished two big jobs early.”
The most common changes
- Meetings cut to 30 minutes by default, with a written agenda required
- Routine updates shared in writing instead of in person
- Protected focus hours each morning with no meetings
- Staggered days off so customers could always reach someone
- Clear rules for urgent issues on the day off, with a rotating on-call person
The results
The researchers’ final report, released this week, found that average revenue among participating companies held steady compared with the same period last year, with some firms reporting modest growth. Sick days fell by nearly a third. Voluntary resignations dropped, and in the employee surveys, most workers said they felt less stressed and had more time for family, exercise and errands.
Hale cautioned that the pilot was small and that participating companies chose to take part, which may have made them more likely to succeed. “These are encouraging results, not a guarantee,” she said. “A company that is skeptical from the start or doesn’t change how it works will probably not see the same benefits.”
Several employers said hiring was the biggest surprise. The owner of a marketing agency said she received more than three times as many applications for an open designer role as she had the year before. A credit union manager said two employees who had planned to leave changed their minds once the shorter week became permanent.
Where it didn’t work
Seven employers ended the trial early, mostly in retail and health care, where shifts are harder to compress. A dental practice found it could not cover patient hours without hiring more staff, and a busy restaurant said a shorter week would have meant either closing an extra day or raising prices. Two retail stores tried rotating schedules but struggled to keep enough people on the floor during weekends and holidays.
“When your work is tied to customers walking in the door, you can’t just cut a meeting and get the time back,” said Linda Morales, who manages a family-owned hardware store that dropped out after three months. “We liked the idea. It just didn’t fit how we operate.” Morales said her store has instead added one extra paid day off each quarter, a smaller change that employees have welcomed.
The restaurant owner who left the pilot, Carlos Vega, said he had hoped to give his kitchen staff a long weekend every week. In practice, the dinner rush did not shrink, and he could not ask the remaining cooks to cover the gap without burning them out. “We ended up with the opposite of what we wanted,” he said. “People were more tired, not less.” Vega said he is now experimenting with closing on Mondays, the restaurant’s slowest night, so that the entire team shares the same day off.
Researchers said those results are an important part of the story. Jobs built around fixed shifts, such as nursing, retail and food service, may need different approaches, like shorter shifts, more predictable schedules or extra time off, rather than a full four-day week.
Key takeaway: For office-based businesses, the four-day week mostly worked by cutting wasted time rather than real work. For shift-based businesses, the results were mixed, and most of those companies went back to their old schedules.
What comes next
The chamber of commerce plans to run a second round of the pilot next year, with space for up to 60 employers. Organizers say they will add more support for shift-based businesses and pair new participants with mentors from companies that completed the first round. Interested employers can contact the chamber for details.
Among the 34 companies staying with the four-day week, most say they will keep tracking results. Brennan said his engineering firm will review its numbers every quarter and adjust if anything slips. Still, he said, it would be hard to go back now. “My people come in on Monday rested,” he said. “They come in ready to work. You can’t put a price on that.”
Hale’s team plans to follow the companies for another year to see whether the gains last once the novelty wears off. She said the biggest open question is whether firms will slowly slide back into old habits, adding meetings and reports until the shorter week feels as crowded as the old one. “The four-day week is not a magic trick,” she said. “It is a discipline. The companies that keep protecting their time will keep the benefits.”
For workers, the shift has already changed daily life. Several employees interviewed for this story said they use their extra day for medical appointments, volunteering, coaching youth sports or simply catching up on sleep. One accountant said she finally had time to visit her mother, who lives two hours away, every other week. “It’s not a vacation,” she said. “It’s just enough room to have a life.”
