Before anyone got a Friday off, they got eight weeks of homework. That is the four-day week's real mechanism: in the largest trial yet, 2,896 workers at 141 companies across six countries, each firm spent two months cutting meetings and redesigning workflows first. Then the day came off, with no pay cut. Burnout fell, job satisfaction rose, people slept better.
But look who was in the room. Forty-five percent professional services and marketing, 4 percent manufacturing, 3 percent retail. This is the laptop economy. The nurse on a rotating rota and the picker on the warehouse floor get the compressed four-by-ten shift, or nothing.
Flexibility behaves like a perk, and perks flow uphill. Who benefits, who carries the risk, who gets to leave.
