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Good practice Imported

Iceland's National & Reykjavík Four-Day Week Trials (2015–2019)

Iceland · Reykjavík · See the Iceland profile · See the Reykjavík profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 10% 86/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Reykjavík City and Iceland's government cut over 2,500 public workers to a 35–36 hour week at full pay; productivity held or rose, and unions then secured shorter hours for 86% of Iceland's workforce — though reviewers flagged the pilots' non-random samples.

2,500+ employees
Public-sector employees covered by the trials (2015–2019)
40 to 35–36 hours/week
Working week reduction (2015–2019)
86 %
Share of Iceland's workforce with shorter hours or the right to them (by 2021)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Reykjavík City Council & Government of Iceland
Period
2015–2019 (trials); shorter hours embedded in agreements since
Keywords
public sector, labour policy, workplace wellbeing, unions

Context

Between 2015 and 2019, Reykjavík City Council and the Government of Iceland ran two overlapping trials cutting the public-sector working week from 40 hours to 35–36 hours at the same pay. The trials covered more than 2,500 employees — about 1% of Iceland's working population — across workplaces including preschools, hospitals, social-service offices and police stations.

Activities

A 2021 joint study by UK think tank Autonomy and Iceland's Association for Sustainable Democracy (Alda), "Going Public", assessed productivity, service levels and employee wellbeing across the trial workplaces after the hours reduction.

Results

The study found productivity and service levels stayed the same or improved in most workplaces, while employees reported less stress and better work-life balance. The results triggered union renegotiations: by 2021, 86% of Iceland's workforce had either moved to shorter hours for the same pay or gained the contractual right to do so.

Conclusions

Independent academic reviewers urged caution: a 2021 analysis in The Conversation argued the "overwhelming success" framing overstated the evidence, since participating workplaces were not randomly assigned, and some trial sites reported strain from unresolved workload rather than reduced hours.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Same salaries paid for reduced hours (no new pay outlay); costs are primarily the opportunity/staffing cost of covering the same workload in less time.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Two overlapping trials ran 2015–2019; findings led to union-negotiated shorter hours being embedded in ongoing agreements from 2021 onward.
Staffing & skills
Reykjavík City Council, Government of Iceland, Trade unions (BSRB), Researchers at Alda and Autonomy

Conditions for success

  • Political commitment from city and national government to test reduced hours without pay cuts
  • Willingness of participating workplaces (preschools, hospitals, police, social services) to adapt scheduling
  • Independent research partners tracking productivity and service levels
  • Union engagement to translate trial findings into binding collective agreements

Common failure modes

  • Non-random selection of trial workplaces limits generalisability of results
  • Some trial sites reported strain from unresolved workload rather than reduced hours, per The Conversation's 2021 review

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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