In the United Kingdom, the short week of 4 working days has been experimenting since June. To the experiment 
More than 70 companies and 3,300 people are participating who work the 80% their usual hours while earning the same salary.
Working fewer hours, earning and producing as before. This is the ambition of the project.
The employees of the participating companies, in the coming months, will put into practice the "100:80:100" model, ie they will earn 100% of their salary, working 80% of their previous hours, while maintaining 100% of their production.
According to a recent US survey cited by Quartz 92% of adult workers said they would rather work 10 hours a day for 4 days than 8 hours a day for 5 days.
While this is the largest experiment in the field, more and more countries are putting themselves to the test. In the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the number of companies and governments that have chosen the four-day week continues to grow.
In Europe in countries like Belgium (where the short week is already a reality since February), Scotland and Spain (which are now experimenting with it) "an increase in productivity was recorded, from 10% up to 40%, against a decrease in hours worked also by 20%".
A Frenchman works 1,514 hours a year, with which he manages to ensure a per capita GDP of 43,000 euros. Beyond the Alps, the employment rate is at 70%, unemployment at 8.8% and 75% of graduates find work three years after graduation”.
In Germany, an average of 1,356 hours are worked per year, the per capita GDP amounts to 48,000 euros, therefore a German earns 6,000 euros more than a Frenchman, working 200 hours less than him. Employment in Germany is at 79%, unemployment at 3.8%, three years after graduation 93 out of 100 people find work.
In Italy, on the other hand, people work an average of 1,723 hours a year, ensuring a per capita GDP of only 35,865 euros. Employment here stops at 59%, while unemployment rises to 9% and three years after graduation, only 52 out of 100 young people have found a job.
Comparison with other countries would leave no room for discussion
On Collective.it, trade union portal, we read. Britain's experiment is being monitored by a group of independent researchers from social and economic research institutes at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as Boston College in the US. The experiment will end in the month of November, with an intermediate moment of evaluation whose results have been announced in these days.
In the light of the results of the mid-term evaluation, in recent days the main newspapers and information bodies in Great Britain have given great prominence to what emerges from the study. Well, in a nutshell, we can say that the four-day working week is no longer a "dream of the future", given that 9 out of 10 companies participating in the experiment declared that they wanted to keep the new working hours even after the end of the trial. In half of the companies productivity remained more or less at the same level with four working days instead of five, while in 34 per cent of the sample productivity was "slightly increased" and in 15 per cent it was "significantly increased".
The site of Bloomberg, an international multimedia company, wrote that the four-day week works and, in addition to reporting the data regarding the effects of the reduction of working hours on productivity, highlighted how for 78 percent of the executives of the companies involved, the transition to new timetable has been good or at least without consequences, while for 88 per cent the shorter week is fine.
The most austere The Times he limited himself to underlining how the four-day working week is supported by 86 percent of the companies involved in the trial, with a sobriety of tones similar to that used by the business magazine Fortunes, an expression of interests and points of view referable to the world of business and finance, who commented: “We already knew that workers like the four-day week. Now we know that their employers like it too.”
On the website of The Guardian we read a comment that extends the analysis of the effects of the reduction of working hours to the economic condition of British families and workers. According to the newspaper, notoriously on a progressive stance, the think tank working on a mid-term evaluation of the working-hour reduction experiment in Great Britain confirms that the four-day working week could alleviate the hardships created by the increase in the cost of living. “The productivity benefits of the 32-hour week are already known, but it is now emerging that workers with children could save thousands of pounds on babysitting and transport costs to work. At a time when the price of electricity is at an all-time high, these savings appear decisive in allowing workers to make ends meet each month. A four-day workweek with no pay cut could play a crucial role in easing the costs caused by the energy crisis."
The commentary article appeared on the website Metro.uk contains an interesting reference to the positive consequences for the environment that the reduction of working hours could determine, together with the beneficial effects on family budgets. The article reports the data according to which the mid-term evaluation would emerge as
the four-day working week could reduce annual emissions of greenhouse gases and, in general, of climate-changing substances in Great Britain by 127 million tonnes. The journal also confirms that the study conducted halfway through the experiment also indicates that the shorter working week could ease the pressure induced by the energy crisis on the cost of living and make it easier to reconcile work and private life, especially for those in the workplace must support the care of children, the elderly or non-self-sufficient people. The research showed that every year a male or female worker with a child under two could save around £1,440 on child care costs and around £340 on commuting costs, by having the opportunity to work one day in less per week.
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