Iceland: One of the leaders in the four-day working week
Between 2015 to 2019, Iceland conducted the world's largest pilot of a 35 to 36-hour workweek (cut down from the traditional 40 hours) without any calls for a commensurate cut in pay. Some 2,500 people took part in the test phase.
How many countries in the world have a four-day work week? UAE is the only nation in the world to have adopted a four-day-and-a-half day work week. Belgium, Scotland, Spain, Japan, Iceland, New Zealand, and Ireland are some of the countries that have opted for a four-day work week.
Japan. The nation that has always talked of work efficiency and quality, sighed towards the four-day work week by urging firms to adopt the pattern. It was in June 2021 that Japan government started an initiative that asked companies to start a four-day workweek with an aim to improve the nation's work-life balance.
After six months, most of the 33 companies and 903 workers trialling the schedule, with no reduction in pay, are unlikely ever to go back to a standard working week, according to the organisers of the global pilot program.
A New Zealand born initiative to change the work week from five to four days has been tabled as a Parliamentary bill in the UK and will be debated later this month. But it's a different story back home in New Zealand, with the government signalling little motion around the idea.
According to the OECD, the country with the shortest working week is the Netherlands, with a reported 29.5 weekly working hours. Broken down by day, that translates to a four-day workweek with just 7.37-hour days. Denmark follows with 32.5 working hours a week, and then Norway, with 33.6.
Belgium. Belgium is the latest country to not only introduce a 4-day workweek, but also gives employees the right to ignore work-related messages and turn off work devices after work hours.
And the country with the shortest working week is… the Netherlands, with the Dutch working an average of 29.5 hours per week. They're followed by Denmark, whose average is 32.5 hours, and Norway, with 33.6. In other words, if you want a better work-life balance, northern Europe is the place to be.
'One of The Most Transformative Initiatives We've Seen In The History Of The Company': 100 UK Businesses Go All In On 4-Day Workweek. A pilot has brought thousands of workers in the UK into a four-day workweek world, with no loss of pay. Some companies have made it permanent.
In mid-October 2022, Parliament has debated, for the first time, a proposal to implement a four-day working week in the UK. The bill, proposed by Labour, would reduce maximum working hours per week to 32 with no corresponding reduction in pay.
To date, Switzerland has not adopted the 4 day work week nor taken part in a 4 day work week pilot program, although some Swiss unions are campaigning for the change. In Switzerland, there is still some skepticism surrounding the idea of the 4 day work week, especially for large businesses.
What Country Has the Hardest Workers? Mexico has the world's hardest workers, clocking in at 2,127.8 hours per year on average. That means that the average Mexican worker works for 40.9 hours a week, about 5.7% more than the average worker in the United States.
On average, people in Australia work 32.4 hours per week.
OECD obtains this figure by dividing the total number of hours worked in 2021 by the average number of employed people.
38 hours. the employee's ordinary hours of work in a week.
Countries with Thursday-Friday weekend days
Thursday-Friday weekends used to be common in predominantly Muslim-majority countries, but Yemen became the last country to switch from a Thursday-Friday weekend to a Friday-Saturday weekend. Other countries such as Somalia and Lebanon also recently made the switch.
The Muslim world observes the weekend on different days in different countries: Somalia and Yemen observe the weekend on Thursday and Friday; Afghanistan, Djibouti, Iran, and Palestine observe the weekend on Friday; Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, ...
There are a total of 260 working days in the 2022 calendar year.
6 Days Work Week
Countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea have a high number of average work hours per year.
Spain. Spain had announced that it would run a trial four-day workweek. The Spanish government agreed to a 32-hour workweek over three years without cutting workers' compensation.
Mixed results in Sweden
In Sweden, a four-day working week with full pay was tested in 2015, with mixed results. Even left-wing parties thought that it would be too expensive to implement this on a large scale. But some companies chose to keep reduced hours for their workers.
Although Norway hasn't officially adopted the 4 day work week, at 34 hours, Norway's work week is shorter than many other countries.
Singapore ranks as the most overworked country in the world, with 7 in 10 employees unhappy at work. The study by Instant Offices compared average working hours, annual leave, and workplace happiness to determine which APAC countries have the strongest culture of overworking, with Singapore coming out on top.