When Labour introduced the Employment Rights Bill to Parliament on 10 October, it was hailed by Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner as “the biggest upgrade to rights at work in a generation”.
Some of the reforms include strengthening statutory sick pay, establishing parental and bereavement leave from day one, ending exploitative zero-hour contracts, and making flexible working the “default” for all workers. The latter was a highly-anticipated part of the policy and marks a significant shift for both employers and employees.
Making flexible working the default simply means that all roles within an organisation need to be open to flexible arrangements. In practice, this could mean remote working, part-time hours or job-sharing – unless the employer can present a legitimate business reason otherwise.
A Missing Right
While the Bill, and its emphasis on flexibility, is a step in the right direction, there is, in my opinion, a key measure missing. One that has been proven to boost productivity, reduce stress and increase employee retention – the four-day working week. To be clear, I am not referring to a week in which employees painfully compress their hours across four days so that they can have a fifth free. Instead, I am talking about a ‘true’ four-day working week, with no additional hours or reduction in pay.
The former simply does not bring the same benefits to staff or businesses. It also goes against the fundamental essence of the four-day working week – giving people time back rather than redistributing that time – and means that employees lose out by spending even more hours at their desks on the four days in which they work.
It is clear that a true four-day working week is what the workforce want. According to research from Flexa, 48 percent of people looking for jobs want a four-day working week. I am not surprised by this, and expect the figure will be far higher in the next 12 months. These statistics are not going unacknowledged as change is being discussed at the highest levels of the UK workforce; Rayner, recently hit the headlines after suggesting that four-day working weeks could improve productivity in local government. If the move could bring about these benefits within local government, why could, and should it not, do the same in the private sector too?
A Small Step
I first started learning about the idea of a true four-day working week after reading a book called Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, and I would encourage anyone interested in the subject to purchase a copy. In February 2023, I subsequently implemented the initiative in my own company, Peak PEO, in the form of ‘Ultra-Flexible Fridays’. This meant that my staff had Fridays to dedicate to work if it desperately needed doing or could instead spend the day doing whatever they wanted. This worked to an extent, but I noticed that staff, especially senior members of the team, were still online on Fridays monitoring emails and messages.
Fast forward to today, and we now have a true four-day working week at Peak where an additional day off is viewed in exactly the same way as a Saturday or Sunday would be. So although Ultra-Flexible Fridays did not work exactly as I wanted, they did introduce my staff to the mindset of a four-day working week and act as a stepping stone towards our success. I would therefore argue, if anyone reading this is planning to take a similar approach, that this small step is vital in ensuring staff engagement and buy-in.
Now all of our employees are switching off, and as a result, we are experiencing seriously strong employee engagement and our recruitment and retention is thriving. When listing a job, with our four-day working week included as a perk, the quality and quantity of candidates applying increases tenfold. Also, unexpectedly, many of our staff are spending their day off volunteering which is improving their self-esteem, confidence and overall wellbeing.
The Benefits of a Four-Day Work Week
It is no secret that exercise also enhances creativity, improves engagement and increases positive mental health, and our four-day working week employees get more of this too. A study from the 4 Day Week Global Foundation found that those who switched to a four-day week not only exercised more frequently, but also increased their exercise sessions by six minutes on average per session, leading to an additional 23.7 minutes on average per week.
These benefits which I have witnessed first-hand are ready to be unlocked in businesses all over the world and a true four-day working week holds the key. I acknowledge that it might not be possible in every industry, hospitality, nursing, and teaching for example, but why should that stop those who are able to take advantage? We do not forbid the UK workforce from taking annual leave during term-time because teachers cannot do the same.
To conclude, we have been operating within the constraints of a five-day working week since the 1900s, and now we are in 2025, something needs to change. People are under more pressure than ever and mental health issues are increasing – the working world needs to catch up and adapt. If we want our employees to be healthier and happier, and in return, boost our businesses, we need to start treating them like the adults they are and trusting them to get on and do their jobs. What better way than entrenching this long-overdue and heavily in-demand discussion into UK law as part of the Employment Rights Bill? Labour has missed a golden opportunity.
