Employees Who Shift To 4-Day Week Devote New Free Time to Sleep

Workers who shifted to 32-hour workweeks logged 7.58 hours per night of sleep, nearly a full hour more than when they were keeping 40-hour workweeks, according to lead researcher Juliet Schor.

When employees can slash their traditional five-day workweek to four days, they tend to allocate their new free time to one surprising activity: sleep.

Workers who shifted to 32-hour workweeks logged 7.58 hours per night of sleep, nearly a full hour more than when they were keeping 40-hour workweeks, according to lead researcher Juliet Schor, a sociologist and economist at Boston College who is tracking over 180 organizations globally as they shift to truncated schedules through six-month pilot programs.

In other words, they spent nearly seven of their eight reclaimed hours per week snoozing, rather than knocking out errands or socializing with friends.

"I wasn't surprised that people are getting a little more sleep, but I was surprised at how robust the changes were," Schor said. The percentage of people considered sleep deprived, getting less than 7 hours of nightly sleep, dropped from 42.6 per cent to 14.5 per cent on four-day work schedules.