Four-day work week: what results did it have in Belgium after 1 year of its application?

The four-day work week in Belgium has not implied a reduction in the working day, which in this country is 38 hours per week, but has created a legal framework that allows them to be compacted into four days, instead of five, and thus gain one more day of rest. In this way, it is possible to maintain the same salary.

Those who take advantage of this new system accept that their daily work day lasts up to 9 and a half hours, something that represents “quite a challenge” for the young economist Davy Serneels, who was one of the first in his company to switch to the four-day week, shortly after it came into effect, in November 2022.

He believed that, after adopting a four-year-old child, this would fit better with his new fatherhood and, although in an interview with EFE he admits some difficulties in “fitting five days’ work into four,” he sees the glass as half full and considers who has gained quality of life.

He decided that his extra rest would always be on Wednesday, because that day in Belgium the schools have an intensive day, and the children leave class at lunchtime, so in the morning he can manage his own company and in the afternoon he can be with his son.

In his particular case, he has seen more benefits than drawbacks in the four-day week, promoted by the Government, but the truth is that the vast majority of Belgians have turned their backs on this model.

What results did it have in Belgium after a year of its application?

The four-day work week has completed its first year of life in Belgium with more pain than glory: Only between 0.5% and 1% of workers have adopted itaccording to the calculations of several organizations, although it has also facilitated the reconciliation between personal and professional life in certain companies.

For the Belgian unions, the model does not satisfy their demands either and they demand a system based on the maxim of ‘work less, get paid the same’. The majority union FGTB wants to universalize the four-day week, but with 32 working hours -and not the current 38-, which would be equivalent to working 8 hours a day, maintaining the same salary.

On the other hand, Davy Seernels is more skeptical: “If everyone worked four days, but got paid the same as when they work five, I think the world would be a beautiful place, but would it work?”

Her company’s head of personnel, Ellen Claes, believes that companies would need a lot of planning to be able to guarantee activity with a universal four-day week.

For now, Almost 100 of SD Worx’s 2,200 employees in Belgium have already taken advantage of the current optional model.a high percentage that Claes attributes to the fact that “it is easier to implement the four-day week in an office environment”, as is the case of this human resources company, rather than in other sectors such as agriculture or industry.

In an interview with EFE, he details the conditions he imposes on his company’s workers who want to compress the week into four days: “The first is, of course, the well-being of the employee himself. Working almost 10 hours a day is a lot… “Is he going to do well, is he going to be able to concentrate?” he points out.

The second condition is that it does not alter the service to the company’s clients, so that they always have someone who can assist them, and the third requirement is that the change works for the entire team and the overall planning of the workforce. If all this is fulfilled, they give way for the four-day week.

“What you get in return is a happier employee, (…) we have not noticed any decrease in productivity,” notes Claes. EFE