The 4 Day Week Foundation is launching a pilot programme for companies in the technology sector to support their transition to a four-day working week.

Beginning in May 2025, the programme will provide six weeks of training and workshops designed to help tech firms prepare for and implement four-day weeks.

Alongside the core training programme, each organisation will also benefit from research support with academics from the University of Cambridge, University of Sussex and Newcastle University to measure the impact of their four-day week trial.

Companies that have already successfully implemented four-day weeks will also be available for networking opportunities and best practice sharing.

A previous UK trial of the four-day working week, conducted from June to December 2022 – which ended with most firms involved deciding to continue with shorter weeks on a permanent basis – showed that many enterprises simply do not need to spend extra money, or lose productivity, when shifting staff to shorter hours, particularly if their job is desk-based.

Speaking with Computer Weekly at the time, tech firms involved in the trial said the sector was well-placed to benefit from a four-day week because of the huge variety of digital tools available, and that offering shorter weeks was helpful for the attraction and retention of talent.

Prior to that, a four-day week trial run in Iceland by Reykjavík City Council and the national government, which included more than 2,500 workers, found that productivity either remained the same or improved in the majority of workplaces involved.

“Nothing better represents the future of work than the tech sector, which we know is an agile industry ripe for embracing new ways of working, such as a four-day week, said Sam Hunt, business network coordinator at the 4 Day Week Foundation.

The nine-to-five, five-day working week was invented 100 years ago and no longer suits the realities of modern life. We are long overdue an update

“As hundreds of British companies have already shown, a four-day, 32-hour working week with no loss of pay can be a win-win for workers and employers. The nine-to-five, five-day working week was invented 100 years ago and no longer suits the realities of modern life. We are long overdue an update.”

In January 2025, the 4 Day Week Foundation announced that over 200 companies in the UK have permanently adopted a reduced hours four-day week with no loss of pay for more than 5,000 employees, with the vast majority working 32 hours a week or less. Of these, 24 companies are from the technology, IT and software sector.

According to Sian Herrington, CEO of IT firm Noteworthy Support – one of the companies supporting the pilot programme – four-day weeks have been a “game-changer” for the firm, which implemented the practice at its inception in 2018.  

“It’s not just about giving our team more personal time – it’s about creating a culture that values efficiency, well-being and balance,” she said.

“We’ve seen consistently high productivity, engagement and overall job satisfaction. Adopting this model has helped us attract top talent and reinforced our belief that happier teams build better businesses. We will always offer a four-day working week to our team.”

In December 2024, learning technology firm Thrive took part in the UK’s first medical trial of the four-day week, which saw researchers at the University of Sussex collect data on 115 Thrive employees between July and October 2024, including MRI scans, blood tests and sleep tracking, as well as weekly questionnaires covering their workplace experiences and well-being.

According to the results, there were notable improvements in a number of employee well-being metrics – particularly those related to stress levels, sleep quality and detachment from work – indicating a significant improvement in work-life balance. Researchers concluded that, overall, the shorter hours led to happier, more productive staff.

In November 2023, the think tank Autonomy – a supporter of the 4 Day Week Foundation – published a research paper that argued automating jobs with large language models (LLMs) could lead to significant reductions in working time without a loss of pay or productivity.

Autonomy noted that although people have long been predicting and expecting far shorter working weeks due to technological advances, historical increases in productivity over recent decades have not translated into increased wealth or leisure time for most people, largely as a result of economic inequality.

However, it also said that realising the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven productivity gains in this way will require concerted political action, as these gains are not always shared evenly between employers and employees, and depend on “geographic, demographics, economic cycle, and other intrinsic job market factors” such as workers’ access to collective bargaining.

“This is a paper that identifies an opportunity and not a destiny. The actual diffusion and adoption of technology is always uneven, driven by a variety of factors: wage levels, government policy, levels of sector monopolisation, trade union density and so on,” it said.

“Needless to say, widespread adoption of these new AI technologies will require a robust industrial strategy that traverses national, federal and municipal levels, and that deploys incentives and regulations for the private sector.

“Most importantly, workplace technologies are social and political technologies, and therefore worker voice – those who will be working alongside and in collaboration with these tools – will be essential.”

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