Supporters of the four-day week say a five-day working week pattern is just a hangover from an old economic age that’s no longer necessary.

They argue that companies can improve their productivity and get the same amount of work done in fewer hours – and the four-day week would spark this improvement in productivity. Early adopters of the policy have also found it a great way of attracting new employees and retaining staff.

Atom Bank and a marketing company called Awin, which currently has 450 members of staff in the UK, are two of the biggest companies in the UK which have signed up and have been thriving ever since.

The campaign has credited them for genuinely reducing working hours for staff rather than just condensing the same number of hours into fewer days.

The results have been magnificent, per Entrepreneur:

Awin’s chief executive Adam Ross told The Guardian that switching to the four-day working week was “one of the most transformative initiatives we’ve seen in the history of the company”.

He continued: “Over the course of the last year and a half, we have not only seen a tremendous increase in employee wellness and wellbeing but concurrently, our customer service and relations, as well as talent relations and retention also have benefited.”

The campaign punts that “together we can build a society where we work to live, rather than live to work,” and in the era of ‘quiet quitting’, the Great Resignation, and remote working visa plans, this couldn’t be more feasible.

There has been some conversation about the four-day workweek in South Africa, but there is still some work to (not) do.

The good news, according to Joe Ryle, the UK director for the campaign, is that there has been increasing momentum for the adoption of the four-day workweek even in the current economic climate.