Then Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal proposed to study the implementation of the 4-day week in the civil service. A dissolution and censorship afterwards, the idea is no longer in keeping with the times. But what do we know about companies that have already moved to a four-day week? Far from the idea of a better balance between private and professional life, the study of the signed agreements reveals a paradoxical intensification of work.
The four-day week has attracted growing interest since the health crisis, on an international scale. In France, certain management representatives and political leaders have become real promoters of this system, like Laurent de la Clergerie, president and founder of the LDLC group within which all employees have three 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 working pace. There has been no recent legislative push for 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 which have adopted the four-day week are always the same (LDLC, IT Partner, Welcome to the Jungle, etc.) and have the common point of having reduced weekly working hours. less than 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 reduction in working hours) or in four days (without reduction in overall working hours)? How does this organization of working time affect the schedules and working rhythms of employees? Which categories of employees and which sectors are concerned?
It is to answer these questions that a study was carried out over the four-day week at the Center for Employment and Labor Studies (CEET) based on the in-depth analysis of 150 agreements signed in 2023 and which partially or completely implement an organization of working time in four days. These texts were drawn at random and selected without prejudging a priori 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 the well-being at work of employees, 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 reducing working hours: almost 9 times out of 10, it is in fact a matter of compressing the working week on four days without reducing working hours. Logically, this four-day week (without reduction in working time) implies an extension of the working day. Thus, very often, the agreements set the effective working time at 8h45 per day for employees at 35 hours and at 9h45 for those at 39 hours. This time does not generally include breaks, particularly the midday break, which means that the daily working hours regularly approach or exceed 10 hours per day.
Even if it is not systematic, employees whose working time is not counted in hours but in days (day rate) are often included in this new work organization. Their non-working days (RTT type) are then increased to one per week. But no agreement studied suggests 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 working days.
This remark on the workload being kept the same also applies to all employees and not just to day packages. It is also valid in the rare companies that plan to reduce weekly working hours: employees are asked to do the same 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.
Diverse 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 five is the most common case (63% of texts) and therefore offers employees an additional “off” day (fixed or in rotation) in addition to the two days of the weekend. This organization of work 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 teleworking for positions not eligible for remote work, or as a partial substitute for teleworking since the adoption of the four-day week is accompanied by a reduction (or even elimination) in the number of teleworking days.
If this week of four days 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 of 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 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 week at 32 hours followed by weeks of 5 or 6 days at 40 hours or more. As a result, this operation makes intense weeks of work beyond the legal duration possible without management having to pay overtime since working time is smoothed over the year. With this mechanism, the four-day week is a continuation of the measures to make working time 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 may also not be organized over 5, but rather over 6 or 7 days. This four-day week a week concerns 16% of texts and is often adopted in services, which are highly feminized, in direct contact with a public and which operate over extended time slots (health, commerce, etc.). For establishment management, 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 scenario, 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 rest days are fixed. Here, the four-day week per week constitutes above all a system likely to make employees accept strong time constraints and calls into question the idea according to which this organization of working time would necessarily be favorable to the reconciliation between professional and personal life. .
It is therefore remarkable that the four-day week conveys a paradoxical conception of well-being at work which is based above all on things outside of work. In the same way as the 12-hour day at the hospital, the main advantage of this system would then be, for employees, the potential distance from their work during their rest time. In this sense, the four-day week is above all a way of escaping “rushed” work. However, with the lengthening of the working day and/or the intensification of the work that it implies, the four-day week can also contribute in turn to degrading work which becomes compressed, further increasing aspirations to put this one at a distance.
Pauline Grimaud, Lecturer at the University of Tours
This article was originally published on The Conversation France website
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