Event

Join the Autonomy Institute for the online launch of 'Four Days a Week: The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being, and Working Smarter' by Juliet Schor, a groundbreaking study of global interest in shorter working hours – and a blueprint for change.  

You can purchase Juliet's book through clicking this link.

Juliet will be joined by a panel of four-day week experts and practitioners to discuss her book – as well as take questions from the audience.

Panel

• Juliet Schor, Author
• Joe Ryle, 4 Day Week Foundation
• Tatiana Pignon, The Autonomy Institute
• Sam Smith, Pressure Drop Brewing
• Grace Western, The Autonomy Institute (Chair)

About 'Four Days a Week'

Bestselling author, leading sociologist and economist Juliet Schor makes the case for a four-day work week, persuasively showing how this model can address major challenges such as burnout, AI and the climate crisis, and how employees, companies, and governments can work together to make it a reality.

Around the world, long hours and intense pressure are taking their toll. When the pandemic hit in 2020, work-induced stress and burnout skyrocketed. Many reached a breaking point. Now, three-quarters of the world’s employees are disengaged and struggling, including in the US and Canada, where half are experiencing high levels of daily stress.

Our current work culture, the five-day, forty-hours-a-week model—which has gone unchanged for nearly a century—is failing. But a remedial countertrend has emerged: the four-day work week. Kickstarter, Bolt, Basecamp, ThredUp, and hundreds of other employers have eliminated the fifth day of work, successfully figuring out how to maintain productivity while seeing remarkable improvements in employee well-being. Hiring is easier and fewer people are quitting. These results are global. Working a four-day week, people feel energized, capable, and more optimistic about their lives—and their jobs.

Four Days a Week is the first large-scale study of this trend. Juliet Schor—an expert who has researched and written about work for more than four decades, beginning with her New York Times bestseller The Overworked American in 1992—shares her pioneering analysis of the benefits of a shorter work week, how companies can achieve them, why the concept has taken so long to emerge and gain acceptance, and why doing so will help a company’s employees and its bottom line. The book is a blueprint for implementing a change that once seemed radical, but is now within reach.

About the author

Juliet Schor is an economist and a professor of sociology at Boston College and is the bestselling author of numerous books, including The Overworked American, After the Gig, and The Overspent American. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been featured across national and international media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, People, 60 Minutes, the Today show, and Good Morning America. Her 2022 TED Talk, The Case for a 4-Day Work Week, has been viewed more than three million times.

About the Autonomy Institute

The Autonomy Institute is an independent, progressive research organisation that focuses on the future of work, welfare, and climate. We develop policy adequate to the changing nature of work and technological innovation. We co-led the UK 2022 4 Day Week Pilot - the largest pilot to date - and have worked with over a hundred organisations delivering shorter working week scoping exercises and trials.