In a pilot project, Microsoft found that a 4-day work week is significantly more efficient. This is a big milestone for all companies that are thinking about introducing Friday as a working day off.
At the company Microsoft are with the introduction of a pilot program Work Life Choice Challenge, which was implemented in Japan and with which the employees' working week was shortened by one day, reached a revolutionary conclusion. The working week, which lasted from Monday to Thursday, was according to all parameters more efficient by as much as 40 percent.
For one month, employees were offered the opportunity to stay at home on Fridays. They compared the results with the same period last year, when employees worked five days a week, and found that employees achieved better results if they were at work only four days a week.
![The research found that employees achieved better results if they were at work only four days a week.](https://e7852c3a.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/nicole-wolf-cz9ajmgkifi-unsplash-660x440.jpg)
This is expected to be a big boost for many start-ups and start-ups who are already introducing a 4-day work week. In addition to shorter working hours, new companies also practice other methods with which they want to create a more pleasant working environment: free healthy snacks and coffee, which are available to employees, and more and more of them also allow employees they bring their pets with them to the office. It is a significant change in the way of thinking: four days of driven, hard and focused work (which often adds up to 40 hours of work in total) and a free extended weekend.
If you do all the work from Monday to Thursday and as a result you have improved your marketing plans, increased your sales or maybe closed all your open items for the week and you are completely satisfied with what you have achieved, it makes sense that you last day of the week free and enjoy the extended weekend. You earned it.
![If you've been working hard, you deserve an extended weekend.](https://e7852c3a.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/scott-webb-uaglgg1wbd4-unsplash-660x438.jpg)
Until now, we could only read about such ideas on various blogs and in visionary books, perhaps some company has already introduced the new principle of the 4-day workday, some may have even published the results of the experiment. But only now has the giant Microsoft offered real data, with which they supported this new idea of increasing productivity.
As many as 2,280 employees were included in the test, and as many as 90 percent of them reported on significantly higher productivity. They also introduced a new rule regarding meetings: they should not last more than 30 minutes. This is an important measure if we want to reduce the time employees spend in the office. Because of this measure, they are meetings became significantly more efficient.
He will definitely be over the idea 4-day working week most excited. Employers, however, must finally to focus on work efficiency, not on the hours and days that employees spend at work.