The secret of what employees who switch to a four-day week do with their extra day off have been revealed by new research – and some are moonlighting on a different job.
As well as housework and hobbies, staff use their extra day for voluntary work, education, caring responsibilities and even working on a side business that can clash with their main job.
Four researchers from Birmingham Business School interviewed employees, managers and executives at UK organisations who worked the ‘100:80:100 model’, where staff get 100 per cent of their pay while carrying out all of their work over four days a week.
The four are: Dr Mengyi Xu, Dr Daniel Wheatley, Dr Holly Birkett and Professor Tony Dobbins. The School is part of the University of Birmingham.
Dr Wheatley told the British Sociological Association’s conference on work, employment and society in Manchester today [Monday, 8 September 2025] that “in addition to using the time for leisure, chores, caring responsibilities, and engaging in education or community and voluntary work, several interviewees reported engaging in side hustles and other paid employment during their fifth day.
“Tensions were present in a small number of instances, with employer representatives and leaders reflecting on the risk their staff’s main job suffers due to work overload.”
One of the 32 people interviewed for the study, who was a manager, told Dr Wheatley about his staff who moonlighted: “People will start their own business with the extra time. They’ll start their own social media channel – that is fine as long as it doesn’t affect your work. But the data shows that when people have too much going on, their work does suffer in general.”
Another manager said: “If you come in here knackered on Monday, this is the main gig, and if you’re going to jeopardise it, that’s your risk.”
One employee said: “I do freelance work on the side and I work with a couple of [employers] just doing admin on a very ad hoc basis. It’s definitely been helpful for me to be able to build up that side of things.”
The new system appealed more to younger staff. One said: “The most supportive group of people on the four-day work-week are Gen Z and millennials. For the baby- boom generation, the four-day work-week is almost like taboo, it’s like shameful, it’s lazy.”
The researchers found that the mutual gains for staff and employers from the four day week outweighed these tensions. One staff member said: “I definitely notice a huge impact on my wellbeing, I feel a lot better. There’s more work life balance and it actually makes me a lot happier in my job as well. The impact is huge. I can’t really imagine going back to working five days. It feels like a whole different world.”
Dr Xu told the conference: “What really stood out was how employees valued having genuine ‘me time’. Parents with school-aged children especially described this as a completely new relief — finally being able to do something for themselves rather than constantly juggling work and childcare.”
Dr Wheatley told the conference that the four-day week could help carers who needed more time to spend with their children, and also reduce pollution from travelling to offices.
“The four-day working week offers substantial potential employee-organisation win-win outcomes, with wider societal benefits possible through improving communities and supporting reductions in inequalities and environmental impacts of economic activity.”
The four-day week could mean that the work intensified and strategic planning became more important, and some staff found it harder to work more intensively. One said: “It can be quite hard and tiring to adjust to when you’re burning through energy very quickly and time very quickly.”
For more information, please contact:
Tony Trueman
British Sociological Association
Tel: 0044 (0)7964 023392
tony.trueman@britsoc.org.uk
Notes:
- The BSA’s work, employment and society conference takes place from 8-10 September 2025 at the University of Manchester. More than 250 presentations are given. The BSA’s charitable aim is to promote sociology. It is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales. Company Number: 3890729. Registered Charity Number 1080235 www.britsoc.co.uk
- The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, educators and more than 40,000 students from over 150 countries. England’s first civic university, the University of Birmingham is proud to be rooted in one of the most dynamic and diverse cities in the country. A member of the Russell Group and a founding member of the Universitas 21 global network of research universities, the University of Birmingham has been changing the way the world works for more than a century. The University of Birmingham is committed to achieving operational net zero carbon. It is seeking to change society and the environment positively, and use its research and education to make a major global contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Find out at birmingham.ac.uk/sustainability