Time Work in the Office and Shop: Workers’ Strategic Adaptations to the 4-Day Week

Increasingly popular post-COVID-19 4-day workweek trials challenge deeply embedded 5-day, 40-hour temporal policies and practices, fostering time-work strategies by employees in the face of reduced working hours. This qualitative study in a small business manufacturing customized products finds similar adaptive responses among both office and shop workers. We detect four prevailing time-work strategies: (1) (re) organizing tasks, (2) shifting (work) time, (3) scheduling communication, and a more deliberate form of time shifting, (4) blocking out (work and nonwork) time. These strategies appear to reflect an increasing sense of employee agency. We discuss possible issues around sustainability.