How Canadian employers can make a four-day work week work

Canadian employers are increasingly exploring the four-day work week, with evidence mounting that a shortened schedule can yield benefits for both staff and management.

While the idea may once have seemed radical, data from global pilot programs—many involving Canadian companies—suggest that cutting one day from the traditional work week can boost employee well-being and even improve productivity.

Juliet Schor, economist and sociologist at Boston College, has led a years-long global study through the non-profit 4 Day Week Global. She said Canadian participation in the trial is outpacing that of other countries. “The rate at which Canadian companies were joining the trial is much higher. So, it's kind of happening more in Canada than it is in the U.S.,” she says.

In particular, Toronto has seen a notable “contagion effect,” Schor adds, where companies are influenced by peers; “The community is sort of small enough that people hear about other companies that are doing it ... and it has a little more of a word of mouth or a sort of social influence kind of spread, in Toronto especially.”

Four-day work week: well-being and retention improvements

Employers participating in the trial consistently report improvements across a wide range of metrics, says Schor, explaining that employees say they experience better health outcomes and a stronger sense of work-life balance while working four days per week.

“We’ve got over 10,000 people in these samples,” Schor says.

“So, stress, anxiety, fatigue – people exercise more, they sleep more. They have fewer sleep problems. They have more positive emotions, fewer negative emotions ... Work family balance is better. Work family conflict is less ... all those things improve.”

These outcomes are not anecdotal – Schor notes that researchers compared results with a control group of companies that did not shift to a four-day schedule.

“We have a very sophisticated model,” she says.

“Which also includes control companies ... and those people don't have any of those improvements. It's only the four-day week. We know that it's the four-day week which is driving this.”

Four-day work week is not ‘one size fits all’

Still, the model may not be feasible in every setting. Moshe Lander, senior lecturer in economics at Concordia University, pointed out that some sectors are fundamentally limited in their ability to reduce workdays.

“There’s certain sectors where this is just going to fall flat,” Lander says.

“But these are the types of things where there's certain jobs that obviously the author has in mind that yes, there's lots of wasted time, say, in offices that are filled with useless meetings ... but that doesn't mean that society as a whole, then, is ready to move to a four-day work week.”

Lander stresses that while some office-based roles may be ideal candidates for shortening the workweek, frontline and public-facing roles present operational challenges: “Working at a factory, working in schools, elementary and secondary in particular … and things where there's clear measurables that are related to you being in your workspace.”

Accountability and productivity: key to a successful four-day work week

Despite initial skepticism from economists, Schor’s data shows productivity often improves in a four-day model.

“People self report much higher productivity on the four-day week, and higher workability,” she says.

“That may seem counterintuitive because they're there for less time, but ... people figure out how to be more efficient, and how to prioritize better and how to use their time better.”

Schor explains that successful implementations of four-day work weeks rest on two fundamental values: trust and accountability.

“You need to have both those things,” she says.

“You have to have a workplace where management can trust its employees, and vice versa... You kind of have to know what people are doing, and you have to be able to hold them accountable.”

Lander raises a concern about inconsistent access during the “fifth” day off, which could create accountability problems particularly with remote workers.

“So as long as I can reach you on that alleged fifth day, then in theory, you could be working four days a week,” he says.

“In fact, you could be working substantially less.”

Reorganizing operations and office space

In the trials that Schor’s research oversaw, implementation of four-day weeks typically begins with a two-month reorganization phase. Schor explains that the 4 Day Week Global trials use a framework known as the 100-80-100 model—employees receive 100 per cent of their pay for 80 per cent of the time, in exchange for maintaining 100 per cent of their productivity.

She explains that the success of many of the organizations’ four-day work week trials depend heavily on that initial preparation stage where inefficiencies are identified and solved.

“Two months of coaching and mentoring and webinars and help doing this,” Schor says.

“They figure out where in their organization they are wasting time or doing things that are unnecessary or low value activities, or change their meetings culture, to help people so they're not getting distracted all the time.”

For employers with fixed infrastructure costs, Lander cautions that shortening the workweek could create inefficiencies around logistics and physical space.

He also points out that some employees value their time in the office and might find a reduction disruptive.

“Presumably, I don't imagine a firm would want to maintain the existing amount of square footage that they operate if they're sending home their workforce for one out of the current five days,” he says.

“What are businesses supposed to do now that, in theory, they would be closed three days of the week, or would they be expecting that the workforce all get one day off, but not necessarily the same day? … That's one of those things that it has the potential to improve morale, but it also has the potential to devastate it as well.”

Coordination challenges in an interconnected economy

Beyond internal implementation, Canadian HR professionals must also consider the external business environment in which their organizations operate – Lander emphasizes that in a globalized, interconnected economy, asynchronous work schedules could introduce friction into supply chains, client service, and even personal routines.

“This is a much, much more difficult thought process than just, ‘Here's some anecdotal evidence that suggests that everybody seems happier with their life, so let's aggregate this up,’” he says.

While some organizations may be able to rotate employee days off to ensure continuous coverage, Lander warns of potential ripple effects: “Remember that when you discuss this with that upstream or downstream person, that person themself might be upstream or downstream to somebody else. And so it creates these ripple effects.”

He adds that organizations doing international business must be mindful of how their availability compares with partners and vendors abroad.

“Imagine that we're only available four days of the week, where another country is available five days a week, so there's that one day where, if they need us, we're not there,” Lander says.

“Unless, of course, we have the rotating workforce, that not everybody is getting the same day off.”

Lander also warns against overlooking the broader social and logistical systems that would be impacted by a shift to a four-day schedule; even basic services and family coordination could be impacted, causing difficulty for employees who have caretaker duties or the like.

The success of any four-day implementation, Lander suggests, depends not just on internal fit but also on its compatibility with external schedules and family life.

“If I get off Wednesdays and my partner gets off Fridays, yeah, we both have four-day work weeks. But is that the same thing as both of us having off Friday?” Lander asks.

Customization and flexibility are key

Schor, who just published a book on the topic, emphasizes that a top-down approach is unlikely to succeed.

“One of the things that the program does is they empower from the bottom up to try and figure out how to make it work,” she says, explaining that every company must tailor its implementation to its own circumstances, consulting from the start with everyone affected.

“Don’t be afraid to be flexible in figuring out what isn’t working, tweaking it and making sure that it continues to work for you,” she says.

Lander agrees that it should not be a blanket policy – that four-day work weeks can be a solution for some companies, but only when approached with clarity and planning. “And every business is going to find that for logistical reasons, ‘It doesn't work for us, or it could work for us, but we need to rethink then how we use our office space or where we want you to be.”

A path forward for Canadian HR leaders

As Schor stresses, one of the strongest indicators of success is company retention of the model; up to 92 per cent of the companies trialed decided to continue with the four-day work week. “The real proof in the pudding for the companies is the fact that they almost all stay on it,” she says.

However, they both agree that bottom-up planning is essential to success, with Schor noting, “The first [step] is, plan. You need those months of planning before you get onto the new schedule.”

Lander holds that HR should proceed with caution, that he is “Always apprehensive when an HR department starts setting a one size fits all rule.” However, he adds that flexibility can work when grounded in operational needs and not used as a one-shot fix: “If people want it and it doesn't disrupt your workflow, then there's nothing wrong with making it available.”