France will launch in December, Germany has done it: testing the four-day week. For some 900 employees who participated in a pilot project for six months, happiness can be measured in working days. Less stress, forty minutes more sleep per week and better individual productivity: the four-day week has positive effects for employees and businesses alike, according to the results of the study recently published by researchers at the University of Münster, in partnership with the 4 Day Week association.
“The introduction of the four-day week has the effect of significantly improving employee satisfaction, especially thanks to the increase in their free time,” summarizes the director of the study, Julia Backmann. Of the 45 companies that participated in the project, 70% would be ready to continue the experiment. However, it did not concern sectors working in a just-in-time situation such as care, logistics or commerce, where the lack of labor is most glaring in Germany. “A bus driver naturally cannot drive in four days as well as in five,” summarizes Julia Backmann.
Laptops aside
As in the test which will be offered from December to French companies by the French branch of the 4 Day Week association, the German experience mainly concerns SMEs and leaves entrepreneurs the freedom to choose their model: week in four days where the same quantity of work is carried out by extending the length of the days to 8:45 or even 10 hours, pure elimination is simple of one day, transformation of Friday into a public holiday or absences à la carte…
The effects of these changes on employees were tracked using a variety of tools, such as smartwatches or by analyzing the level of cortisol, the stress hormone, in their hair. However, more than the health effects, “what is interesting is to observe the measures taken by companies to implement this four-day week”, analyzes Enzo Weber, researcher at the German Labor Market Institute. Productivity was maintained by reducing meeting time, for example.
Companies have also introduced micromeasures, such as leaving telephones and mailboxes aside for longer to promote concentration. According to Enzo Weber, digitalization and artificial intelligence would also allow German companies to gain 0.3 points of productivity per year.
Good life or standard of living
This argument, however, does not convince the German conservatives of the CDU. “Life may be more beautiful with a four-day week, but we will not maintain our standard of living with that,” decided the president of the CDU and candidate for chancellor for the next elections, Friedrich Merz.
The productivity argument is at the center of the debate in an aging country. In 2023, 570,000 jobs had not found candidates, according to the IW Institute of Economics, close to employers, which calculated that this shortage in sectors such as construction or health would have caused a loss of 49 billion euros. in production capacity to German companies. “The costs resulting from the shortage of qualified labor, such as stress due to excess work or the loss of innovations, are not yet included in this sum,” specify the authors of the study.
The Greens and the SPD, on the other hand, see avenues for overcoming labor shortages in the Münster experience. “If we want to further exploit the great potential of women, flexible working hours that adapt to life are of paramount importance. The four-day week could be an avenue,” argued the vice-president of the Green group in the Bundestag, Andreas Audretsch.
For the moment, Germany does not plan to legislate on the four-day week. Even the IG Metall union, which made a demand a year ago for the steel sector, gave up in the face of gloomy economic forecasts.