Sen. Bernie Sanders just unveiled a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States, and while its political fate is likely grim, he’s got some science on his side.
The results are in for a yearlong U.K. study that had 61 companies shift to a four-day workweek on a trial basis — and more than half had such a positive response that they’re keeping it for good.
The pilot program conducted by the think tank Autonomy, alongside the organizations 4-Day Week Campaign and 4-Day Week Global, was initially only supposed to last six months, but it was extended to a year by nearly 90% of the companies that participated because they were getting such positive results.
Like Sanders has proposed, the companies shifted the standard 40-hour week to 32 hours, with no pay reduction for employees. In a statement, he noted it’s not a “radical idea,” adding, “Today, American workers are over 400 percent more productive than they were in the 1940s. And yet, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than they were decades ago.”
The results were what you might have guessed: happier employees, lower turnover and even more efficiency.
The results were so positive that 51% of the companies have decided to implement the four-day workweek permanently.
One hundred percent of the managers and employers who were surveyed afterward reported a “positive” or “very positive” impact from the experiment, the study shows, and employees say it helped their physical and mental health.
Survey questions, methodology and results have not been verified or endorsed by ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.