Fifteen Australian companies spent two years testing whether workers could do their jobs in four days instead of five — and the results have now been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Not one company reported a drop in productivity. Fourteen of the 15 chose to keep the shorter week after the trial ended. Six saw output actually increase.
At a glance
- 100:80:100 model: Workers receive 100% of their pay, work 80% of their hours, and commit to 100% of their previous output — restructuring workflows rather than compressing the same workload into fewer days.
- Burnout reduction: Six of the 15 companies said reducing burnout — not boosting productivity — was their primary reason for trialling the shorter week, reflecting a 2025 Beyond Blue survey finding that one in two Australian workers currently experiences burnout.
- Four-day week trial results: Six companies saw productivity rise, nine held steady, and only one abandoned the model — with researchers noting that company was already going through major internal change when the trial ran.
What the study actually measured
The research was led by Professor John Hopkins of Deakin University and published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, a Nature Portfolio journal. The team conducted in-depth interviews with companies that had formally adopted the 100:80:100 model between 2022 C.E. and 2024 C.E., with interviews taking place from early 2023 C.E. through late 2024 C.E.
One design choice stands out. Rather than imposing a single performance benchmark, the researchers allowed each company to define productivity on its own terms. Some tracked revenue and profit. Others measured projects completed on time, staff turnover, absenteeism, or net promoter scores. That flexibility was intentional — what success looks like differs by industry, and a rigid one-size-fits-all measure would have made the findings far less useful in the real world.
The companies spanned a wide range of sectors: property management, publishing, financial services, and health technology, among others. One firm had already been running the four-day model for nearly eight years before researchers spoke to them.
Why productivity held up
The most common misreading of a four-day work week is that it simply compresses five days of work into four. The 100:80:100 model works differently. Before the shorter week begins, companies and employees examine how time is actually being spent. Unnecessary meetings get cut. Repetitive tasks get automated or reassigned. Work that was never that valuable gets eliminated.
The result is four days of focused, higher-quality work — not a sprint through the same volume in less time. That distinction explains why concerns about output so often prove unfounded once companies actually make the switch.
Client-facing organizations handled the transition by staggering days off across teams rather than closing entirely on a set day, so clients always had someone available. That kind of flexibility is part of why the model held up across such different business types. A CEO at a health technology firm tracked the trial’s success through absenteeism, attrition, and mental health days. A CEO at a financial services firm said her company had been encouraging clients to live their best lives — and it felt inconsistent to hold employees to a different standard.
Australia in a global context
This study adds to a growing international body of evidence. In 2024 C.E., 45 German companies trialled the four-day model, with the majority being small or medium enterprises. Financial performance showed no significant difference from the previous year — which researchers interpreted as a productivity gain, since the same output was delivered in fewer hours.
In the U.K., more than 200 British companies have permanently adopted the four-day week without reducing pay, spanning sectors from tech startups to charities. The global four-day week movement now has pilot data from Iceland, Japan, Ireland, and Canada, with results consistently pointing in the same direction.
Prof Hopkins framed the timing as significant: “As we grapple with high workplace burnout, and societal challenges about what to do with the productivity gains we’re predicted to get from AI, a four-day work week could be an interesting part of both those conversations.” The point about AI matters. As automation handles more repetitive tasks, the question of where those recovered hours go becomes urgent. The four-day week is one answer: let people reclaim that time rather than simply adding more tasks to the same workday.
What the data doesn’t settle
The case is strong, but it comes with honest caveats. Some researchers caution that productivity gains in short-term trials may partly reflect a novelty effect — employees working harder because they know they are being observed or because the change feels new. Whether those gains hold over five or ten years remains an open question.
There is also the structural challenge of industries where a four-day model is harder to implement. Healthcare, emergency services, logistics, and hospitality operate on schedules that don’t map neatly onto knowledge-work rhythms. Any serious policy conversation about shortening the working week needs to reckon with those sectors honestly.
The fact that individual companies — not the research team — defined what productivity meant also limits direct comparison between firms. These are real methodological constraints worth naming.
None of that erases what the data shows. The published findings in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications confirm that across 15 companies, in multiple industries, over two years, not one reported falling behind. Most held steady or improved. And 14 of 15 chose not to go back.
The five-day, 40-hour week was not always the norm — it was a labour movement achievement, standardized in the 20th century as industrial-era assumptions about work took hold. Those assumptions are worth revisiting. These 15 Australian companies ran a live experiment on exactly that, and the signal that came back was clear.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Science Aim
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- U.K. cancer death rates down to their lowest level on record
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Australia
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