Portugal's Government-Backed Four-Day Week Pilot (2023)

Coordinated by Portugal's CoLABOR research centre with the international non-profit 4 Day Week Global and academics from Henley Business School (University of Reading) and Birkbeck, University of London, the pilot ran a six-month reduced-hours trial from June to December 2023 across 41 companies and more than 1,000 workers in 10 districts, concentrated in Lisbon, Porto and Braga.
Companies — mostly in consulting, science, technology, industry and trade — cut working time by an average 13.7%, split between a fixed day off (51% of firms) and a nine-day fortnight (49%). The independent academic evaluation, published by Henley Business School in 2024, found the share of workers struggling to manage work-life balance fell from 46% before the trial to 8% afterward, alongside drops in reported anxiety and fatigue.
The Portuguese government reported that 95% of participating companies assessed the experiment positively. As a fixed-term pilot rather than a legal mandate, continuation depends on individual employers choosing to keep the new schedule after the trial ended — a scale-up path still open rather than already achieved.

Read the full analysis: https://www.henley.ac.uk/news/2024/results-from-portugals-government-backed-4-day-week-trial-released