Is Canada ready for a four-day work week?

Nine out of 10 Canadians say they are interested in a four-day work week, compared to just six in 10 who want the ability to work from home. The appeal is clear: four eight hours at work instead of five and more time for life outside it.

The idea is no longer purely hypothetical. Ontario legislators considered a bill proposing a four-day work week pilot in 2022. The British Columbia Greens have repeatedly pushed for one. And Canadian companies, from technology firms to advertising agencies, have experimented with shorter weeks on their own. 

The proposition raises a much bigger question: After generations of technological advances and productivity gains, should Canadians finally spend less of their lives at work? Or in a country already struggling with productivity, is working less for the same pay simply unrealistic?

For this week’s conversation, we brought together two experts: Linda Duxbury, a distinguished research professor emeritus at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, and Jean-Nicolas Reyt, an associate professor at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management.

They agree that our relationship with work needs to change but disagree sharply about whether a four-day work week is the answer.

Linda Duxbury: We need to be clear about the four-day model proposed. This idea means 100 per cent of your pay for 80 per cent of your time, while maintaining 100 per cent productivity. 

Jean-Nicolas Reyt: Yes, that’s the proposal. But the four-day work week isn’t just about working less. Employers also benefit from greater motivation and retention.

Duxbury: I don’t think a four-day work week is going to work. The problem we need to solve is the organizational culture of expecting people to be available 24/7. And those are the people who get promoted.

Reyt: Fifty years ago, most families needed only one stream of income which allowed responsibilities such as elder care and child care to be split between two parents. Today, most Canadian families need two incomes. And it comes at a cost. We are outsourcing family functions like elder care and child care to the market.

Duxbury: Women don’t want to go back to 50 years ago. Just because we did things differently in the past doesn’t mean we’re going back to them.

Reyt: I agree that 50 years ago it was typically women staying home, and I don’t want to go back to that. But with a four-day work week, both parents would have more time for parenting.

The five-day work week is about 100 years old. In 1926, Ford became one of the first major employers to move factory workers from six days to a five-day, 40-hour week without cutting their weekly pay. That helped popularize the model, and it eventually became the standard. I think today we’re lacking visionary leaders willing to take a stand that is counterintuitive to our culture.

Duxbury: The studies reporting positive findings from a four-day workweek are self-reports. It’s the same with remote work when everyone says: “Yes, I’m productive working remotely. Don’t make me come back to the office.” People are not as productive as they say they are.

The reality with a four-day work week is that we are increasing work intensity. Suddenly, I have to maintain 100 per cent productivity in four days, and that assumes there’s slack in the system. A lot of the time there’s not.

I was at a PhD defence earlier today and spoke to my students about this debate. They all thought I would argue for four-day work week. Then I asked them, “What if I told you that you had to produce your thesis, with all the same milestones, in half the time?” And they said, ‘Well, s — t, no. I couldn’t do it.’

The big guys, the Fords, are not going to consider this because people are working on lines, and they’ve got output measures. It’s only going to work for knowledge workers who need creativity and innovation. It’s not going to work for health care or schools. A big chunk of the workforce won’t even be considered for this arrangement.

Reyt: You’re saying that, because we’re in a productivist culture, we can’t change the model. What I’m saying is that most Canadians don’t favour this culture, and at some point we should listen to them.

If we had continued like this, we would still be working 80 hours a week, like we were 200 years ago. 

Duxbury: Two-hundred years ago, it was a very different world, focused on manufacturing.

What employees want and what’s feasible may not be the same thing. Canada is not as productive as much of the industrialized world. And a huge chunk of the workforce cannot work a four-day week, just like a huge chunk can’t work remotely. 

Reyt: France did it in 2002. They just switched from 39 hours to 35 hours.

Duxbury: I would never say France was a good model. Did they do that for hospitals?

Reyt: Yes, they did it for everybody.

Duxbury: Aren’t they going broke as a country?

Reyt: Well, you can look at different measures. I do research in hospitals about violence against health-care workers, and I can tell you that I think a four-day workweek would be extremely welcome.

Duxbury: Of course, it would, Jean-Nicolas. However, there are costs and benefits to the taxpayer of moving nurses from what they’re doing now to a four-day model.

You’ve still got to deliver. You can have a wonderful model, but if your country, hospitals and schools are bankrupt, nobody has a job because there’s no money to pay them. There’s also no guarantee that if we move to this model and people are pressured to keep their productivity up, they wouldn’t still work evenings and weekends.

Reyt:  It reminds me of what was said when unions went on strike for better working conditions. You’re parroting what CEOs were saying: “We’re going to go broke. These are lazy people. They should work more.” Yet change happened.

I think we’re looking at two different things. You’re looking at feasibility. I’m looking at desirability. You’re looking at the short-term application. I’m looking at the long-term effects of the current system.

Even though the data is self-selected, there is a study showing that some small companies offering 100 per cent of pay for 80 per cent of the time still seem to be delivering 100 per cent productivity.

As a negotiation professor, that raises a question for me: Why would you give 100 per cent today? You’re not going to be paid more. You’re not going to be told you can leave early. They’re just going to give you even more work.

It’s just like with AI. Now we can do so much more, but nobody is saying we can work less.

Duxbury: I know from my own research that there’s actually a curvilinear relationship between hours of work and productivity. Initially, you can’t do as much in 10 hours as you can in 30 or 40. But my research suggests diminishing returns start at about 45 hours.

When I talk to engineers, they ask, “What is the exact number when we have the decline so I can make my people work that many hours plus half an hour?” And I say, “There is no definitive number.” It depends on what other responsibilities you’ve got in your life.

And why would people want to contribute? There’s a strong professional identity. If I really wanted to make money, I would have gone into consulting. I would have made a lot more money than I do as an academic. But I happen to like the work. A lot of people, believe it or not, like their jobs.

Reyt: Working five days a week is not an environment that is conducive for families.

If you look at the way Canada is going right now, this is not a healthy workforce.

Duxbury: It’s not a productive one either. 

Reyt: I think we need to look at the big picture. The problem is that we have myopia in business. Quarterly earnings calls create this need to constantly improve returns.

Canadians want to know what this country will look like in 10 or 20 years, not just in three months. Is a four-day workweek feasible in the next three months? No, it’s not. But where are we going on our current trajectory? 

And look at remote work. I did my PhD on remote work before the pandemic. Work location wasn’t seen as a variable: You had to be in the office, and that was it.

Then the pandemic happened and made work location a variable. It became something you could negotiate over. I think we can have the same conversation about work time. We don’t have to consider it fixed. We can ask whether changing it would serve our national interests.

Duxbury: If you look at remote work right now, the data suggests only 20 to 30 per cent of people have a job that can be done remotely. So, we’re creating several classes of workers, aren’t we? Workers who can work from home and workers who can’t.

I would make a similar argument about who can theoretically work 80 per cent of the time for 100 per cent of the pay. What do you do about the people who can’t? Do you say, “This is only a benefit only for other people so we will have to pay you less?” 

Or do you say, “Well, 70 per cent of the workforce can’t get this benefit, so we have to increase their salaries to make it equitable?”

It’s an ugly conversation, and it’s an ugly time right now. None of this is simple.