The four-day week has attracted growing interest since the health crisis, and this on an international scale. In France, some management representatives and political leaders have become real promoters of this system, like Laurent de la Clergerie, founding president of the LDLC group, in which all employees have 3 days off per week.

Moreover, as a recent Crédoc study showed , this organization of working time is also very popular with employees who regularly mention it to describe their ideal work schedule. There has been no recent legislative incentive in favor of the four-day week, but the labor code allows companies to adopt it by signing a collective agreement. Moreover, the Ministry of Labor estimated that 10,000 employees were experimenting with this organization of working time in January 2023 .

Few examples, but a strong media presence

Although the subject is highly publicized, the examples of companies that have adopted the four-day week are always the same (LDLC, IT Partner, Welcome to the Jungle, etc.) and have in common the fact that they have reduced the weekly working time to below 35 hours. But apart from these few cases presented as emblematic, there is very little overall knowledge about what the four-day week covers in companies: is it a four-day week (with a reduction in working time) or a four-day week (without an overall reduction in working time)? How does this organization of working time affect employees’ schedules and work rhythms? Which categories of employees and which sectors are concerned?

It is to answer these questions that I carried out a study on the four-day week at the Centre for Employment and Labor Studies (CEET) based on an in-depth analysis of 150 agreements signed in 2023 that partially or completely implement a four-day working time organization . These texts were drawn randomly and selected without any prior prejudging of what “the” four-day week is.

The main reason put forward in the agreements to adopt the four-day week is the desire to improve employees’ well-being at work, described as a factor in the competitiveness of companies because it is likely to promote productivity gains. But beyond these declarations of intent, how do companies organize the four-day week?

Longer days for a shorter week

First of all, the analysis of the agreements shows that the four-day week is very often implemented without a reduction in working time: almost 9 times out of 10, it is in fact a question of compressing the working week into four days without reducing working hours. Logically, this four-day week (without a reduction in working time) implies an extension of the working day. Thus, very often, the agreements set the actual working time at 8 hours 45 minutes per day for employees working 35 hours and at 9 hours 45 minutes for those working 39 hours. This time does not generally include breaks, in particular the lunch break, which means that the daily working time is regularly close to or exceeds 10 hours per day.

Even if it is not systematic, employees whose working time is not counted in hours but in days (daily package) are often included in this new work organization. Their non-working days (RTT type) are then increased to reach one per week. However, none of the agreements studied mention a possible reduction in the workload. On the contrary, most of them mention that the workload will remain the same with the four-day week. In other words, these employees will have to do the same work in four days instead of 5 with longer or denser workdays.

This remark about the workload being kept the same applies to all employees and not just to those on fixed-day contracts. It is also valid in the rare companies that plan to reduce the weekly working hours: employees are asked to do as much in less time. In this case, the four-day week implies an intensification of work. The four-day week therefore means for employees that their work rhythm is either unchanged or intensified.

Diversified facilities

Despite these common characteristics, the analysis of the agreements reveals different types of four-day weeks depending on the sectors of activity and the employees concerned. The four-day week out of 5 is the most frequent case (63% of the texts) and therefore offers employees an additional “off” day (fixed or rotating) in addition to the two days of the weekend. This work organization is observed in industry, construction and in office jobs, particularly in high value-added services. In this configuration, the four-day week is presented either as compensation for the absence of telework for positions not eligible for remote work, or as a partial substitute for telework since the adoption of the four-day week is accompanied by a reduction (or even elimination) of the number of teleworked days.

Although this four-day week out of five is the one that is most widely discussed today, the study of company agreements nevertheless reveals two other organizations of working time in four days. A second way of organizing the four-day week consists in considering it as an instrument for making working time more flexible according to the needs of the company. This modulated four-day week, which concerns 20% of the texts, again in industry and office jobs, allows companies to cope with fluctuations in their activity due to the seasons or the order book, with for example four-day weeks of 32 hours followed by weeks of 5 or 6 days of 40 hours or more. As a result, this operation makes it possible to have intense weeks of work beyond the legal duration without management having to pay overtime since the working time is smoothed over the year. With this mechanism, the four-day week is in line with the measures to make working hours more flexible carried out since the 1980s in the name of business competitiveness .

The mirage of a better work-life balance

Finally, the four-day week can also not be organized over 5, but rather over 6 or 7 days. This four-day week out of 7 concerns 16% of the texts and is often adopted in services that are very feminized, in direct contact with the public and that operate over extended time slots (health, commerce, etc.). For management of establishments, it has the advantage of increasing the daily amplitude and thus facilitating the implementation of long working days over a smaller number of days.

In this case, the four-day week is combined with regular work on weekends or at the ends of the day, and neither the third day worked nor the two weekly days off are fixed. Here, the four-day week out of 7 is above all a mechanism likely to make employees accept strong time constraints and calls into question the idea that this organization of working time would necessarily be favorable to the reconciliation of professional and personal life.

It is thus remarkable that the four-day week conveys a paradoxical conception of well-being at work that would be based above all on what is outside of work. In the same way as the 12-hour day in the hospital , the main interest of this system would then be, for employees, the potential distancing from their work during their rest time. In this sense, the four-day week is above all a way of escaping from “rushed” work . However, with the lengthening of the working day and/or the intensification of work that it implies, the four-day week can also contribute in turn to degrading work, which becomes compressed, increasing all the more the aspirations to distance it.

Author Bio: Pauline Grimaud is a Lecturer at the University of Tours