• 15 September 2009 by David Cohen

The four-day week could boost employment, save energy and make us happier.

FANCY a three-day weekend - not just once in a while but week in week out? You may think your bosses would never agree to it, but the evidence suggests that employers, employees and the environment all benefit.

The four-day week comes in two flavours. One option is to switch from five 8-hour days to four 10-hour days, meaning overall hours and salaries stay the same. In August 2008, the state of Utah moved all of its employees, apart from the emergency services, to working 4/10, as it has become known. The hope was that by shutting down buildings for an extra day each week, energy bills would be slashed by up to a fifth.

The full results of this experiment won't be published until October, but an ongoing survey of 100 buildings suggests energy consumption has fallen by around 13 per cent. The survey also found that 70 per cent of employees prefer the 4/10 arrangement, and that people took fewer days off sick.

The second form of the four-day week is to work the same number of hours per day for four days only, with a commensurate 20 per cent pay cut. With the recession hitting revenues, accountancy company KPMG announced in February that it was offering its 11,000 UK employees the option of a four-day week to avoid job losses. So far 85 per cent of employees have applied to join the scheme, and 800 now do a four-day week.

Not everyone will like the idea of working longer days or taking a pay cut in exchange for a 3-day weekend, but it appears most do. Rex Facer at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, questioned 151 human resources directors working for large cities across the US. Where city employees had been offered flexitime or 4/10 regimes, 64 per cent said the alternative work schedule improved morale, and 41 per cent said it improved productivity - though 9 per cent said the opposite.

According to Facer, it was the crash of 1929 that led to the five-day week. "Before that it was common to work six-day weeks with 12 to 14-hour days. When the Great Depression hit, the idea was to share work around to get more people into employment." During the next big financial crisis in the 1970s, there was much talk of moving to a four-day week, but for a variety of reasons that didn't pan out. "Things are different now," says Facer. "I wouldn't be surprised if we could get 50 per cent or more of the workforce working four-day weeks in the next few years." Next up: the three-day week.

Read more: Blueprint for a better world