Here are the companies that have announced moves to a 4-day week (or back from it, in a couple cases) this week. (You can read the previous post here.)

    • Commerce protection provider Signifyd announced a permanent shift to a 4-day week. The fully-remote company had experimented with a 4-day week for several months in 2021: the R&D team first tried “Summer Fridays” every other Friday, then in August the entire company had “Wellness Days” off every other Friday, and they decided in December to make it permanent. According to Business Wire, since “[t]he work by its nature is 24 hours, seven days a week, every week,” the company “will structure schedules so that constant support and consultation continue to be available, while still providing every team member with a four-day week.”
    • UK arborist Arbtech Consulting trialed a 4-day week with 10-hour days this fall. It’s not clear whether they’re continuing it; opinion was split in the (small) staff, as it usually is for 10-hour days. From what I can tell, how you feel about a 4-day week with 10-hour days all comes down to which is stronger: the appeal of 3-day weekends, or your distaste for the longer days.
    • Optima CS announced that after a year, they were abandoning their 4-day week. Previously, they had been pretty positive about it, but founder Kyle Davies now says, “After 12 months working that way at Optima we’ve scrapped it & we’d never go back.… Ultimately it’s just very slightly better than being tied to a desk & clock watching for 5 days a week.”
    • London startup Daye, a “female health research and development company on a mission to bridge the gender gap in product innovation,” announced that after a year-long trial, it would make its 4-day week permanent. “365 days later, we can confidently say it was the right thing to do – for the team and the business. We now have ‘flexible Fridays’, where team members can choose to do deep, focused work, or take the day for themselves. No pressure, no expectations.”
    • Passive Dynamics, an environmental services company based in Dublin, is moving to a 9-day week, giving people every other Friday off on a rotating basis.
    • Alter Endeavours Digital Creative used SHORTER to help it move to a 4-day week. (Love to see the book being put to good use!)
    • Miami-Dade Solid Waste began offering 4-day weeks with 10-hour days to drivers.
    • TMS Americas, a team management consultancy, started a 4-day week at the beginning of the year.
    • B2B ecommerce provider DCKAP announced it would start taking one Friday off per month. Based in Austin and Chennai, they became fully remote company in November 2021.
    • Southern California game studio Armor Games announced it is adopting a 4-day week, after a 3-month trial in 2021. (The whole thread is good.)
    • It’s not new, but it’s new to me: GooseChase, a Canadian company. They started a 4-day week trial in June 2021. By September, they found that “having more flexibility on the fifth day allowed the team to fuel the passion that powered work on the other four.”
    • B2B marketing agency Chief Nation announced a move to a 4-day week. They had previously redesigned their London office to better handle hybrid work, and that “got the management team thinking about how else the company could evolve to accommodate shifts not only within Chief Nation, but in the wider business landscape.”
    • New York’s D’Youville College announced a 4-day week for staff and administrators. It does not apply to faculty, according to faculty union president Laura Hechtel; “If anything,” Hechtel writes, “the faculty are assuming additional responsibilities that have been thrust upon them due to the actions of the administration.”
    • Likewise, Subramanian Kalpathi tells the story of Beroe, and Indian SaaS company, that turns out to have been working 4-day weeks since 2017. It’s a long piece, and worth a read.

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