Iceland is the case sceptics find hardest to dismiss. It was not a marketing pilot in a small tech firm. It was a set of public-sector trials, run over several years, involving more than 2,500 workers, over 1% of Iceland’s workforce at the time.
At Day5Group, we help organisations transition to a four-day week. Iceland matters to our clients because it tests a question many boards ask: can shorter hours survive in services the public actually depends on, where demand does not politely pause?
What Iceland did
Between 2015 and 2019, Reykjavik City Council and the Icelandic national government ran trials that cut working time from 40 hours a week toward 35 to 36 hours, with no cut in pay. Workplaces were varied: offices, services and shift-based settings were all part of the picture. Staff did not simply leave early and hope. Workplaces were expected to find smarter ways to meet, hand over and organise work so service did not fall away.
That last point is easy to miss in headlines. Iceland did not test “same work, less time, good luck”. It tested shorter time paired with deliberate changes to routines.
What the trials found
The analysis, published by Autonomy and the Icelandic organisation Alda in 2021, reported that productivity and service provision stayed the same or improved in the majority of workplaces. Just as consistently, staff reported less stress and burnout, better health, and a better balance between work and home life.
Those two findings belong together. Service held up not despite staff feeling better, but in workplaces where better organisation and better recovery reinforced each other.
Accounts from the trials also described household effects that managers rarely see in a dashboard. Men in heterosexual partnerships were reported to take on more housework when their hours fell, and single parents found the shorter week particularly valuable. The lesson is modest but real: time helps care. It does not automatically rearrange every household task, and leaders should not promise that it will.
What changed afterwards
The trials did not end as a report on a shelf. Icelandic unions used the results in collective bargaining, and shorter hours spread well beyond the original trial sites. Autonomy and Alda reported that around 86% of Iceland’s workforce had subsequently moved to shorter hours or gained the right to do so.
That pathway matters for private employers too. Iceland shows how a bounded trial, with published results, can become a norm because each side can point to evidence rather than trading opinions. The trial gave unions, managers and politicians a shared set of facts.
What Iceland does not prove
Honesty about limits strengthens, rather than weakens, the case.
Iceland is a small, high-trust labour market with strong collective bargaining. Its public-sector trials were not randomised experiments, and workplaces volunteered in ways that can flatter results. Cutting to 35 or 36 hours is also less dramatic than a clean 32-hour, four-day week. Iceland is best read as evidence that meaningful reductions can be sustained at scale, not as a guarantee that any firm can cut 20% of time next month with no redesign.
Nor did every workplace have the same experience. Coverage services still had to be staffed. Shorter hours there meant roster thinking, not wishful thinking.
Lessons for a UK or US employer in 2022
First, start with service, not the calendar. Icelandic workplaces protected the service first and found time inside the way work was organised.
Second, expect to change small routines: shorter and fewer meetings, clearer priorities, better handovers. The gains came from dozens of unglamorous adjustments.
Third, measure both sides of the bargain: service and output on one side; stress, health and balance on the other. If you only measure output, you will miss why staff defend the change. If you only measure wellbeing, the board will not trust it.
Fourth, give a trial a decision route. Iceland’s results travelled because they were written down and used in negotiation. Your pilot should end with published internal results and a clear next step.
Iceland does not give you a shortcut. It gives you something more useful: proof that shorter time can move from experiment to expectation when the work is redesigned and the evidence is shared.
Sources
- Iceland public-sector shorter-hours trials 2015-2019 — Autonomy and Alda, reported July 2021 via Phys.org: https://phys.org/news/2021-07-shorter-week-boost-productivity-burnout.html
Day5Group is a consultancy that assists in the transition to a 4 day work week. More about Day5Group · All blog articles