Trials of a four-day working week in Iceland have been lauded an "overwhelming success", with research revealing the initiative helped increase productivity, and led to an overall improvement in workers' wellbeing.

"Organisation was key to working less — and the reward of reduced hours provoked people to organise their work more efficiently — with changes made to how meetings were run, as well as schedules, and in some cases to opening hours," the report noted.

"In some instances, meetings were avoided by instead sending emails or exchanging information electronically."

The trials also resulted in a marked improvement in worker wellbeing, which increased across a range of indicators, from perceived stress and burnout to health and work-life balance.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-06/iceland-four-day-working-week-trial-success-report-finds/100270388 

Allowing people to be flexible and have more time to themselves results in a better workforce and community, lessons for all other countries in how we organise our societies  

Well I'm definitely in favor of not giving bloodthirsty corporations more of our valuable time and life but my country would never go for it.

Although I do think there may be some unintended consequences to the many for making an oppressive system like capitalism more palatable for the few.

Some of the Rich who inherited their wealth think people should not have job flexibility to spend time with families

Interesting, but I personally find satisfaction with work and even work more hours a week because I spend some of my time socializing with my coworkers. If anything, working more makes me forget my life problems, when I'm not doing anything to distract myself I tend to start having dark thoughts, so better keep my mind active

In other hand I would like working less hours a day, 5 or 6, so I could engage in another degree or just finally start a graduation program. I wish companies have a more flexible work schedule on this sense

I was working 4 days a week (10 hours per day, so still the standard 40-hours-week) in the past. I started 2 hours earlier than the usual workhours (7-17, or 7am to 5pm), so I had the usual evening time with my family and a long weekend from Thursday evening to Monday morning.

I've been hearing mixed things about these 4-day work weeks. It was proposed here in Belgium by the PS (socialist party), but an expert in labour economics said that it's absolutely unrealistic (unless people are willing to get lower wages and consume less). According to him, the academic world is almost unanimously opposed to it. He says that on the long term there would be a disastorous rise in wage costs and unemployment, because employers will either try to automate more or move to other countries. He also says that the number of burn-outs might stay the same anyways.

https://www.tijd.be/opinie/algemeen/minder-werken-voor-zelfde-loon-is-sciencefiction/9981673.html

Automation is a good thing as it reduces the amount of required labour.

As for companies moving to other countries, what’s stopping them from doing that now? Already they can get far cheaper labour in many other countries. If the field is well suited to the market and region, companies won’t move because of pricier labour.

I’m not sure which economists they’re citing, but it sounds like they have an avaricious agenda demanding cheap labour, long hours, and low investment only technological advancement. Historical disproves then, anyway. We have a history of improving automation and lowering work hours, and this has had a correlation with stronger democracy and stronger economy.

Absolutely. If you can increase your daily performance by 20%, why not! In the end, you're paid for your output.

That's only true if the total hours also drop down. Otherwise, if you make 4x10 hours instead of 5x8 hours for instance, there's no change to your weekly work hours, just the fact that you have one more day off per week to relax and recover.

The opposition mostly stems from people who simply remove a day and end up with 4x8 instead of 4x10 yet keep the same monthly salary in mind. of course this would be like a 20% salary increase and not sustainable in such a big jump. But those who calculate like that just show off their failure to do math.

Also less time spent commuting between home and work, which as far as I understand would be a big change in the US as long-distance commutes are relatively normal there. So the only ones really losing out on a 4-days-week would be gas stations due to less commute.

There is also the argument which this Iceland experiment seemed to show, is that with even less hours per week worked productivity can go up in the right circumstances, because with less hours people get more done in the time they have, they are more efficient, much of a "work" day is often wasted time, busy time that's not productive and morale sapping, having flexibility and more time off based on the Icelandic experience seems to make people happier and more productive overall

A video of the UK perspective of the Icelandic experiment for a 4-Day week (8 hours per day, same pay as 5 days) and the resultant increase in productivity