What Is Your Friday Worth?

There is a simple question at the heart of the four-day working week debate: how much is your Friday worth? - Not philosophically, but financially.

If your employer offered you an extra day off every week but knocked 10% off your salary, would you take it?

The answer is rather less straightforward than the enthusiastic response to the four-day week might suggest because while people appear to love the idea of working four days, there is one small detail they are surprisingly keen to retain: their money.

Everyone wants the four-day week. Just don't touch the salary.

The distinction matters. A genuine four-day week usually means reducing working time from around 40 hours to 32 without reducing pay — the so-called 100:80:100 model: 100% of salary, 80% of the hours, with the same expected output. A rather less glamorous alternative is simply to reduce someone's hours and their salary. And that's where enthusiasm starts to wobble.

UK research from the CIPD found that 31% of workers would like to work fewer hours, but only 11% were willing to take a pay cut to achieve it. In other words, almost three times as many people want fewer hours as are prepared to pay for them.

This makes perfect sense. “Would you like more free time?” is a question that has approximately the same difficulty level as “Would you like a puppy?”

“Would you like more free time and £5,000 less income?” is where the room suddenly becomes quieter.

But some people absolutely would

The interesting thing is that the answer isn't simply “no”.

US research produces considerably higher estimates of workers willing to trade income for time. A Joblist survey found that 28% of full-time salaried employees would take a pay cut for a four-day week. Among those willing to do so, the average reduction they would accept was 11%.

A separate ResumeBuilder survey found 21% of workers were willing to accept a salary reduction. But the size of that reduction matters: more than half of those willing to take a cut would accept 5% or less, while only a small minority were prepared to sacrifice 15% or more.

Qualtrics found a similar pattern: 37% of employees said they would accept a pay cut of at least 5%, but only 8% would accept a cut of 20% or more.

So perhaps the question isn't simply: Would you take a pay cut? It's: how much would you pay to get your Friday back? And that's much more interesting.

Let's put some numbers on it

Let's say you earn £50,000 (must be nice).

A 5% pay cut costs you £2,500 a year. A 10% cut costs £5,000. A 20% cut costs £10,000.

In exchange, you're getting roughly 52 extra days away from work every year.

That means the 10% pay cut is, very roughly, £96 a week to reclaim your Fridays.

For some people, that's an appalling bargain - for others, it's a steal.

If Friday means childcare, seeing your children, exercising, studying, running a side business, dealing with life's endless administrative nonsense, or simply recovering sufficiently to enjoy the other two days, £96 a week might suddenly look rather reasonable.

The point being that, contrary to what Molly Mae might think, we don't all have the same 24 hours in a day...

Some people's time is more valuable than others.

The problem with making employees pay

But there is an even bigger elephant in the room.

If a company reduces your working week from 40 hours to 32 and reduces your salary from £50,000 to £40,000, it hasn't really discovered a revolutionary new way of working. It has largely discovered part-time employment.

The more interesting proposition is whether an organisation can eliminate enough pointless meetings, duplicated work, bureaucracy, interruptions and other corporate habitat to allow employees to work fewer hours without producing less value.

That's literally the whole idea behind the four-day-week!

And it puts the responsibility somewhere rather interesting. Instead of asking, “How much salary are employees willing to sacrifice?”, perhaps employers should ask: “How much waste can we remove before we start asking people to sacrifice anything?” It puts the responsibility on the higher ups.

The CIPD found that two-thirds of employers believed moving to a shorter week without cutting pay would depend on becoming more efficient or working smarter, while 68% pointed to greater use of technology.

That sounds suspiciously like a management problem rather than an employee problem.

So, would people take the deal?

Probably some would.

But the evidence suggests that the majority of workers don't want a four-day week badly enough to sacrifice a substantial chunk of their income for it. Life's expensive nowadays. And there's a fairly clear pattern: the smaller the pay cut, the more attractive the proposition becomes.

The real sweet spot may therefore sit somewhere between the two extremes.

Not five days for 100% pay.

Not four days for 80% pay.

But perhaps four days, 90–95% pay.

Or, better still: four days, 100% pay — because we've finally worked out that being busy isn't the same thing as being productive.

People will always want more time. The fascinating question is whether businesses can become productive enough to give it to them without sending the invoice to the employee.

And if they can't?

Well, now we know what your Friday is worth.

References

• CIPD (2022), “The four-day week: Employer perspectives.” Research into UK employee preferences and employer attitudes towards shorter working hours. CIPD research

• CIPD (2022), “A third of businesses expect the four-day week to become a reality in the next ten years.” Includes the finding that 31% of UK workers wanted fewer hours, but only 11% would accept a pay cut. CIPD press release

• Joblist, “Survey: Employees Weigh in on the 4-Day Work Week.” Survey of more than 2,000 full-time employees, including willingness to accept different levels of pay reduction. Joblist survey

• ResumeBuilder (2024), “1 in 5 Workers Would Take a Pay Cut in Exchange for a 4-Day Workweek.” Survey of 1,250 full-time workers. ResumeBuilder survey

• Qualtrics, “The Numbers Behind Four-Day Work Weeks and Paid Mental Health Days.” Survey evidence on willingness to trade salary for a shorter working week. Qualtrics research