A four-day week sounds great, but it could cost you at least £135,000

As someone who loves my job, I’m probably the last person you’d choose to make the case for working less. If I’m honest, it’s not a four-day working week I need, but a doppelganger to get me through the five-day version. But someone asked me recently on my podcast, re:Working, if they had three wishes, should they use one to ask for a four-day week? With lots of work-life balance rhetoric out there, I’m sure they expected me to say go for it. But I didn’t – at least, not straight away. Shorts The thing most people miss when they talk about the idea of a four-day week, is that there are two completely different types. The one filling the headlines is an employer redesign: same pay, fewer hours, the work reorganised so it still gets done. The latest UK trial of that model, run by the 4 Day Week Foundation, was a striking success. Across 17 organisations and nearly 1,000 staff, every single one chose to keep the new set-up after the trial. They reported sharp falls in burnout, better mental health, and no loss of pay. If your employer offers that, bite their hand off! But this is almost never the four-day week an individual is actually offered. What you’re usually doing is different: dropping a day, and roughly a fifth of your salary with it, in exchange for time. That isn’t the wish most people would ask of a genie in a lamp, and it’s definitely not the deal offered in the trials. It’s a pay cut with a day off attached, and deserves to be judged as one. And even though the first version tested has received lots of positive reports, be aware that it is not magic. The set-up suits desk work far better than shift work or anything customer-facing, for example. Some firms abroad have gone back to five days after the early shine wore off, and one English council that went down to four-days is now in a very public argument with the Government over whether service has slipped. And if you want less work because you don’t like your co-workers, it definitely won’t make your corporate culture concerns just disappear. It can work brilliantly. But when the genie’s out of the lamp, you have to be careful what you wish for. For one thing, from my experience, it can quietly move you off the promotion track. Senior roles are rarely advertised at four days, and the people who get tapped on the shoulder tend to be the ones available five days a week. But the part that really worries me is that the price is bigger than most people realise. A 20 per cent pay cut is not just 20 per cent less this month; it lowers the base that every future pay rise is calculated from and slashes what goes into your pension each year. The numbers are sobering. One analysis, by the pension firm Standard Life, found that a sustained move to part-time hours could leave someone up to £119,000 worse off in retirement. Another, by the Fawcett Society, put the lifetime cost of a five-year, part-time stint at around £135,000. Now, before I get told “money ain’t everything”, let me highlight the other side of the argument. Sometimes taking the financial hit is absolutely worth it. If that fifth day buys you your children’s childhood, your health, or a life that would otherwise pass you by, it may be the best money you ever spend. After all, time is the one thing you cannot earn more of. But I am not telling you the day off is a mistake; I am asking you to consider its real price before you pay it, and to be sure you are buying a life and not just a lie-in. So, here is what my response was on the podcast, and what I would tell my own children: first, ask for the better version before you accept the worse one. Can the work be redesigned so you keep your pay, the way those trial companies did? As my mum says: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” – just be clear in the ask. Second, if it is a genuine pay cut, do the full sum, not just the monthly one – factor in the pension and the lost pay rises, not just the salary. The government’s free MoneyHelper service can help model the pension hit for you. Third, protect your progression in writing: agree how you stay visible and how promotion still works on four days. And, finally, trial it before you sign away anything permanent. The real question shouldn’t be limited to whether or not you can afford a four-day week. It is whether that fifth day is buying you the life you actually want, or just a quieter, less-paid version of the one you already have. Or, you could look at it as my wise friend Karen Blackett OBE does: rather than doing less work, find a work-life blend, where you are doing work aligned to your life. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy looking for that lamp, so I can wish for a look-a-like to take some of this work off my hands…