Is the four-day week still working? We asked the founders who’ve stuck with it

Cutting the working week by a fifth without cutting pay sounds like a tough sell in 2026, given the pressure founders face to use every pound wisely. And yet, four years on from the UK’s major four-day week trial, the idea has refused to fade. 

To help settle the debate, Startups.co.uk spoke to six business leaders about life on a shorter week, several of whom have been running it since 2022. Their verdict? The benefits are real, but it’s not as simple as locking the doors on Friday and watching them roll on. 

Here’s everything they’ve learned, from making it work to the hurdles they’ve hit along the way, plus tips on adopting the model successfully yourself. 

Productivity has held up, and it’s measured in outcomes, not hours

Despite initial scepticism over whether cutting hours would hamper productivity, every founder we spoke to said output has stayed strong. 

For Andrew McLernon, co-founder and CEO of lead gen platform Interlink, the aim was never in doubt: “Our principle became 100% pay, 80% of the time and 100% of the output.” He says the results back it up: “We’ve continued to grow and have achieved 100% of our revenue targets in consecutive years.” 

Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director at the digital marketing agency Marketing Signals, which made its trial permanent after starting it in May 2022, is equally emphatic. “Fewer days definitely doesn’t mean less output, quite the contrary in fact,” he tells us, adding that the model focuses on “quality rather than quantity”.

Results over rotas

We already measured our teams based on output, not attendance, meaning it’s incumbent on team members to produce results rather than to demonstrate how many hours they spent working on something. Before the move, we had been researching the pros and cons of the four-day week, looking at various case studies from other companies.

Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director at Marketing Signals

At the debt advisory and support firm, Bell & Company, productivity hasn’t just stayed level; it’s strengthened. But getting there wasn’t a straight line. “Our productivity is stronger now, but the model we operate today isn’t identical to the one we introduced in 2022. We’ve had hiccups, and we’ve changed things when they haven’t worked,” founder and chairman Terry Bell tells us.

One adjustment was introducing employees who work Tuesday to Friday and take Monday off instead. “That strengthened our Friday coverage while still preserving the four-day-week benefit,” he says.

The common thread among the founders is a rethink of what productivity actually means. Rather than counting hours at a desk, they judge it by what gets done. For instance, McLernon says the four-day week “has made us focus much more on outcomes rather than simply how long somebody is sitting at a desk.”

Cutting meetings and rethinking processes is what makes a four-day week work

With productivity holding up for most businesses, cutting a working day might look like an easy win. However, in reality, it takes work. The founders also agreed that simply squeezing five days into four is a recipe for burnout. 

Corinna Nicol, founder of Connect, a Yorkshire-based community for women business owners, puts it plainly: “you can squeeze five days of overwhelm into four if you don’t change how the work is organised.” Bell agrees: “A four-day week shouldn’t mean trying to cram five frantic days into four. If that’s what happens, you’ve simply created a more stressful working week.”

In practice, that often means cutting waste. Augustin Prot from website translation tool Weglot says they reviewed meetings and communication before launching its trial, which led them to change how they review their code: “Our code reviews used to need 2 people to validate a feature before deploying it. Now if one of them is off, 1 person is enough.”

McLernon agrees the shorter week highlights where time is being wasted: “If meetings become too long, processes become cumbersome or communication becomes fragmented, you notice it much more quickly when you only have four working days.” 

It’s not a set-and-forget policy either. Bell explains that productivity hasn’t remained strong because they introduced a four-day week and left it alone. Instead, it was because he “continually reviewed where the pressure points are and adapted the model around them.” 

As the experience of these founders shows, for any businesses weighing up the switch, the lesson is to audit before you act. Start by tracking where your team’s time actually goes, trim or scrap low-value meetings, and test the new schedule in a trial before making it permanent. Then keep reviewing it as the business grows. 

The payoff goes beyond output: wellbeing and hiring

According to Liz Howard, Executive Coach and founder of talent consultancy Up2Eleven, rest shouldn’t be seen as a distraction from work. “Having time to exercise, eat properly, rest, spend time with people I care about and simply switch off isn’t separate from my performance at work – it supports it,” she tells us.

It’s also a recruitment tool. Hoyle says the four-day week “has even been mentioned by those applying for roles within the business,” and Bell agrees: “We’ve had candidates tell us directly that the four-day week was one of the reasons they approached Bell & Company in the first place.” 

For these founders, the extra day off is about more than output. It gives staff room to recharge, and it gives smaller businesses a way to attract talent without competing on salary alone.

It’s not a holiday: the biggest hurdles of a four-day week

Despite its clear allure, the founders were upfront that a four-day week isn’t plain sailing. The biggest hurdle is cover – if clients expect a response five days a week, someone has to be there. 

To overcome this challenge, Marketing Signals split its team in two, while Weglot lets staff choose Wednesday or Friday off. For Terry Bell, whose firm advises on debt, it’s non-negotiable. “Debt problems don’t conveniently operate Monday to Thursday, and we have always believed clients should be able to reach us when something urgent happens”, he explains to us.  

Teams also adapt at different speeds. Augustin Prot says that during the initial trial, some Weglot sales and marketing staff needed adjustments: “Some teams adapted immediately, while others needed new processes and ways of working. That’s completely normal.” 

There’s also the issue of overspill. Nicol admits her own week isn’t perfectly rigid because she runs events. Without that discipline, she warns, the shorter week soon falls apart: “A shorter week only works sustainably when it includes genuine boundaries. Not four official working days followed by a fifth spent secretly answering emails.” 

The good news? None of these obstacles are dealbreakers; they just show how the four-day week is an operating model that needs ongoing attention. The founders who made it work tested the change, listened to their teams, and adjusted as they went. And judging by how long most of them have stuck with it, some extra admin is a small price to pay for a three-day weekend.