The Four-Day Workweek — or, how Germany accidentally proved that exhausting people is not a business strategy

Dear #MoreThanCareer community,

Let me start with a confession. As a recruiter with sixteen years in the industry — five of them at two of the world's largest CROs, and the last year at one of Germany's biggest pharmaceutical companies — I have spent a significant portion of my career trying to convince talented people to accept jobs that will consume five days of their week, fifty weeks of their year, for decades. The pitch has always been: the work is meaningful, the compensation is fair, the career trajectory is promising. And all of that is true. What nobody in talent acquisition has ever said out loud in a job interview is: "By the way, we have absolutely no scientific evidence that the fifth day is adding value."

Germany just tested that assumption. The results are in. They are, to put it mildly, unangenehm für alle Beteiligten (uncomfortable for everyone involved).

The German Trial: Where Forty-Five Companies Discovered What Their Employees Already Knew

In 2024, Germany conducted its largest-ever four-day workweek experiment. Over 45 companies across 13 industries participated in a six-month trial organised by 4 Day Week Global, the University of Münster, and consultancy Intraprenör.[1] The model: 100% pay, 80% hours, 100% productivity — or as I like to call it, the "stop pretending meetings are work" framework.

The headline: 73% of participating companies decided not to go back to five days.[2] Not because they are idealists. Not because they read a LinkedIn post about work-life balance. Because the numbers were better. Revenue stable. Profit unchanged. Employee resignations down 42%. Burnout reduced by 64%.[3] Over 90% of employees reported improved well-being.[22] And in a detail that should make every pharmaceutical CFO choke on their quarterly report, meetings were reduced by 60%. Sixty percent. Which means that for the previous decade, these companies had been conducting approximately 1.5 times more meetings than anyone actually needed. Schockierend (shocking) — said absolutely nobody who has ever worked in a corporation.

Employees slept an additional 38 minutes per week, exercised more, and generally behaved like people who were not slowly being compressed into a fine paste by an arbitrary scheduling convention invented during the Industrial Revolution.[3] The two companies that dropped out cited economic difficulties unrelated to the trial.[22] The rest — 73% of them — looked at the data, looked at their employees, looked at the data again, and said: "Warum haben wir das nicht schon vor zehn Jahren gemacht?" (why did we not do this ten years ago?).

The answer, of course, is that nobody asked. Or rather, everyone asked, and nobody in a position to approve it was listening. Wer nicht hören will, muss fühlen (who will not listen must feel the consequences). In this case, the consequences are €82 billion in annual sick leave costs.[4] Which brings us to the elephant in the room. Or rather, the elephant lying on the sofa with a doctor's note.

€82 Billion: The Annual Cost of Pretending That Five Days Is Fine

Germany is, by international standards, spectacularly unwell. Not in any dramatic, newsworthy way. In a slow, grinding, Krankschreibung-by-Krankschreibung (sick note by sick note) way that has become so normalised that employers now treat it as a weather pattern rather than a structural problem.

The numbers: German employees took an average of 15.2 sick days in 2024 — nearly double the figure from the mid-2000s.[4] The German Economic Institute puts the total cost of continued pay during illness at €82 billion in 2024, up €10 billion from just three years earlier.[4] That is not a line item. That is a national hobby. By comparison, UK workers averaged 5.7 sick days in 2022.[6] The VFA — Germany's Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, which is not exactly a radical left-wing think tank — calculated that without the above-average sick leave, Germany's economy would have grown by 0.5% in 2023 instead of contracting by 0.3%.[6] The cumulative losses over four years: up to €160 billion.[5]

Read that again. The country lost €160 billion because its workforce was too sick, too burned out, or too exhausted to show up. And then — in a stroke of comedic timing that only reality can deliver — the same country ran a four-day workweek trial that reduced burnout by 64%.[3]

I am not suggesting that giving everyone Fridays off would immediately solve Germany's sick leave problem. That would be simplistic. I am suggesting that spending €82 billion per year on the consequences of overwork while simultaneously refusing to test the most obvious intervention is the kind of logic that should be studied in business schools under the heading "Sunk Cost Fallacy, National Edition." Der Krug geht so lange zum Brunnen, bis er bricht (the jug goes to the well until it breaks). The jug is cracking. The well is dry. And someone in the boardroom is still insisting that more trips to the well will fix everything.

The DACH Situation: One Has Data, One Has Promises, One Has Reservations

Germany has the data. The trial is done, the University of Münster has published, the companies have decided. No legislation is imminent — this is Germany, where changing a traffic regulation takes longer than some pharmaceutical clinical trials. But the evidence is now on the table, in peer-reviewed form, and the 42% reduction in resignations is the kind of number that makes talent acquisition leaders weep quietly into their sourcing spreadsheets.[3] The trial also demonstrated that it worked not just for tech startups but across 13 industries — including manufacturing, where the usual objection is that "it could never work here." It worked there. Tja (well then).

Austria has desire. One in two Austrians said they would welcome a four-day week.[7] The country already operates at an average of 35.5 hours, the sixth shortest globally. Collective bargaining agreements cover 98% of workers, providing a uniquely effective mechanism for implementing reduced hours without waiting for parliamentary approval.[8] Companies in knowledge sectors — IT, consulting, marketing — are increasingly adopting four-day models unilaterally.[9] The government programme for 2025–2028 includes vague support for pilot projects on working time models. Vage Unterstützung — vague support — is, in Austrian political vocabulary, what passes for revolutionary enthusiasm. The European Trade Union Institute has publicly urged Austria to follow Germany's lead.[7] Austria is listening politely and ordering another coffee. Gut Ding will Weile haben (good things take time). Or in Austrian: good things take time, several rounds of consultation, a working group, and a Sachertorte.

Switzerland has scepticism — and, somewhat inconveniently for the sceptics, the fourth-shortest average working week in the world at 34.6 hours.[11] In 2024, the country launched its largest-ever four-day trial, supported by the University of Applied Sciences in Bern.[10] The chief economist of EconomieSuisse described a legislated four-day week as "poison for Switzerland as a business location" — Gift für den Standort Schweiz.[10] This is the same country where Novartis, Roche and dozens of smaller pharma companies are struggling to fill regulatory and clinical roles because international talent is increasingly choosing based on working conditions, not just compensation. The poison metaphor may need updating. Wer im Glashaus sitzt, sollte nicht mit Steinen werfen (who lives in a glass house should not throw stones) — particularly when the glass house is losing talent to competitors who offer a three-day weekend.

Meanwhile, in the Rest of the World: A Comedy in Three Acts

Act I — United States: The Country That Cannot Decide Whether to Work Less or More. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act in 2024, proposing 32-hour weeks with no pay reduction.[12] It has not passed. It will not pass under the current administration. Meanwhile — and this is the part where you should check that you are not reading satire — Silicon Valley startups have begun importing China's 996 model: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, 72 hours total.[16] Companies are posting job adverts explicitly asking for 70-plus-hour weeks. America, in 2026, is simultaneously proposing a four-day workweek at the legislative level and a seven-day workweek at the startup level. Der eine sagt hü, der andere hott (one says left, the other says right). The horse is confused. The horse would like a day off.

Act II — China: When the Country That Invented the 72-Hour Week Tells You to Stop. The 996 schedule — once publicly praised by Alibaba's Jack Ma as a "blessing" — has been declared illegal and is now being actively dismantled by Beijing.[13] China's labour law caps the workweek at 44 hours, but the average worker still clocks 48.5 hours as of mid-2025.[13] Major employers are scrambling to comply: Tencent enforces 6 p.m. departures, Midea sends staff home by 6:20, DJI locks its offices at 9 p.m.[14] These are not wellness perks. They are regulatory compliance strategies. The Chinese government has decided that overwork is economically and demographically unsustainable — and when Beijing decides something is unsustainable, it does not form a working group. It acts. When the birthplace of the 72-hour week starts locking the doors, the argument that "we cannot possibly reduce hours" loses a certain amount of credibility.

Act III — India: The Argument That Refuses to End. India's average worker logs 47.7 hours per week.[15] Infosys founder Narayana Murthy still publicly defends 72-hour weeks. A younger generation is pushing back, and India's startup ecosystem is increasingly proving that productivity does not require self-destruction.[15] For DACH pharmaceutical recruiters, this context matters enormously: Indian professionals relocating to Germany are frequently motivated not just by salary but by Lebensqualität (quality of life). A four-day model at a DACH employer would turn a good relocation offer into an irresistible one. If you are an international candidate considering the move — from India, the US, or anywhere where your working week feels like a hostage situation — DACH's evolving flexibility is a genuine competitive advantage in global talent markets. Even before the four-day model arrives formally, the gap between DACH working conditions and the alternatives is already wide enough to drive a career decision through.

The global evidence: Since 2019, four-day trials across more than 10 countries have produced the same result with almost tedious consistency: 92% of participating companies kept the shorter week.[17] Over 2.7 million UK workers now work four days. Belgium has legislated the right to request one. Iceland has 86% of its workforce on reduced-hour contracts.[17] At some point, an evidence base stops being "promising" and starts being "the answer that nobody wants to implement because it would mean admitting that the previous century was, on this specific point, wrong."

"But Pharma Is Different" — and Other Things People Say Before Being Proven Wrong

Yes, pharmaceutical companies have constraints. GMP manufacturing lines cannot shut down every Friday. Clinical trial sites operate on patient timelines, not corporate scheduling preferences. Regulatory submissions to the EMA have deadlines that the EMA did not set based on anyone's weekend plans. All of this is true, and anyone who suggests otherwise has never worked in the industry.

What is also true — and this is the part that gets conveniently omitted from the "but pharma is special" argument — is that the majority of pharmaceutical employees do not work on manufacturing lines. They do not monitor patients. They are not operating centrifuges. They are sitting at desks, attending meetings, writing reports, reviewing documents, sending emails, attending more meetings about the meetings they already attended, and then going home exhausted from a day that could, by any honest assessment, have been compressed into six concentrated hours of actual work plus two hours of Verwaltungstheater (administrative theatre).

Regulatory affairs teams deliver discrete outputs — submissions, responses, variation dossiers — that are measured by quality and timeliness, not by hours visible on Microsoft Teams. Medical science liaison teams already operate flexibly. Pharmacovigilance teams process cases in intensity bursts, not in steady eight-hour streams. Quality documentation reviews do not magically improve when the reviewer has been staring at the same SOP for five consecutive days. Mehr desselben ist nicht besser — es ist nur mehr (more of the same is not better — it is just more).

The talent market evidence is impossible to ignore. Companies that adopted a four-day model saw application volumes increase by 200%.[18] One company received 6,000 applications for a single position — twenty-three times the average.[19] Sixty-eight percent of employers already on a four-day week say it helps them attract the right candidates.[20] In a DACH pharma market where biostatisticians, regulatory specialists, and clinical data scientists are in structural shortage, these numbers are not interesting. They are existential. Wer zuerst kommt, mahlt zuerst (first come, first served) — and in pharmaceutical talent acquisition, the first employer to offer a credible four-day model for eligible functions will enjoy a recruitment advantage that their competitors will spend years and several million euros in employer branding trying to replicate.

Five Career Strategies That Are Not "Believe in Yourself" — for Interns, Executives, and Everyone Trapped Between

Eine kurze Anmerkung — a brief note: if you came here looking for advice to "embrace the journey" or "lean into your authentic leadership presence," I regret to inform you that you are in the wrong newsletter. The following strategies are specific, evidence-based, and — fair warning — require you to actually do something.

1. Stop Applying Blindly. Start Mapping Which Employers Are Already Flexible — and Target Them.

The four-day workweek will not arrive as a government decree. It will arrive company by company, CRO by CRO, function by function. Your job — whether you are a junior candidate looking for your first Werkstudent position or a senior regulatory director planning your next move — is to identify which employers are structurally positioned to adopt flexibility before they publicly announce it. CROs with project-based models and measurable outputs are better candidates than traditional Big Pharma headquarters with presenteeism cultures. Smaller biotechs competing for the same talent as Roche and Novartis will adopt earlier because they literally cannot compete on salary alone — they need a different advantage.

The specific action: check Kununu and Glassdoor for mentions of compressed schedules, flexible hours, or pilot programmes. In interviews, ask: "How is your organisation thinking about working time models in the next two to three years?" This signals strategic awareness without sounding like you are primarily motivated by three-day weekends — even if you are, and honestly, who could blame you.

2. Rewrite Your CV in Outputs, Not Hours. This Is Not Optional.

The four-day model only works in organisations that measure results, not attendance. If you want to be the professional who thrives in that environment — and the professional that these organisations seek — you need to frame your entire career narrative in outputs. "Responsible for regulatory submissions" is a job description, not an achievement. "Delivered 14 CTD submissions in 12 months, zero major deficiencies, median review cycle 22% below departmental average" is a reason to call you back.

For juniors and interns: this applies to you with extra force. Your competition has the same degree, the same internship duration, and approximately the same generic description of their experience. A six-month Praktikum described as "supported the clinical team" disappears into a pile of identical applications. The same internship described as "built a tracking tool that reduced document retrieval time by 40% and was adopted as a departmental standard" gets you into the interview room. Der Teufel steckt im Detail (the devil is in the detail) — and in CVs, the detail is the difference between a callback and the recycling bin.

3. Turn Germany's €82 Billion Problem Into Your Personal Negotiation Asset.

Germany's sick leave crisis is not just a macroeconomic statistic for economists to argue about on panel discussions that nobody watches. It is a live business problem for every employer in DACH. If you are negotiating with a mid-sized pharma company or CRO — and in 2026, most of them are privately panicking about absenteeism — the four-day workweek evidence is a ready-made argument for flexible arrangements. The German trial delivered a 64% reduction in burnout.[3] That is not a feel-good statistic. That is a cost reduction.

For senior candidates and executives: propose a pilot. Offer to design and lead it. Frame it not as "I would like Fridays off" but as "I can reduce your department's absenteeism by implementing a structured flexibility programme based on the University of Münster evidence." One of these sentences gets you a polite rejection. The other gets you a meeting with the COO.

For professionals aged 50 and above: this is your strategic moment. You have managed teams through restructuring, regulatory crises, and product launches. You understand implementation risk. Position yourself as the person who can design, pilot, and evaluate a four-day programme — not as someone requesting one. Alter schützt vor Torheit nicht (age does not protect from foolishness), says the proverb — but experience absolutely protects from the specific foolishness of implementing a four-day week without adequate change management. That is your pitch.

4. International Candidates: Lead with Lebensqualität. It Is Not a Weakness. It Is a Strategy.

If you are relocating from India, the US, China, or any market where the working week feels less like employment and more like a custody arrangement that your employer has over your waking hours — DACH's working conditions are a structural advantage, not a cultural curiosity. German employers offering genuine flexibility want to hear that it matters to you. It validates their investment. In interviews, say it directly: "The combination of meaningful work and sustainable working conditions is a significant part of my motivation." No employer who offers good conditions is offended by a candidate who values them. The ones who are offended were going to disappoint you anyway.

For those requiring visa sponsorship: companies that invest in flexible working models are statistically more likely to invest in their employees broadly — including relocation and sponsorship. These employers think long-term. Target them. They are more likely to see your sponsorship as an investment than as a cost.

5. If You Are Already Employed: Build the Business Case Before Someone Else Builds It Without You.

If you are currently working in DACH pharma and believe a four-day model could work for your function, start documenting now. Track your outputs for three months. Note which meetings are genuinely necessary and which are Pflichttermine ohne Ergebnis (mandatory appointments without results) — and if you work in pharma, you already know the ratio. Identify the 20% of your activities that produce 80% of your value. This data becomes your proposal.

For executives and senior leaders: you have the authority to pilot this. The Germany trial proved it works when leadership commits and the implementation is deliberate. The companies that failed were those that, in the WEF's diplomatically devastating phrase, "simply lopped off a day" without restructuring workflows.[17] Do not lop. Design. Measure. Iterate. That is what pharmaceutical professionals do with everything else. Apply the same rigour to how you work, not just what you work on.

For Recruiters and Hiring Managers: Your Competitors Are Reading This Too

I am going to speak directly to my colleagues in talent acquisition, because this is where I have sat for sixteen years and this is where I know the landscape is about to shift.

The four-day workweek is the most powerful employer branding tool that most pharmaceutical companies are not using. The evidence is unambiguous: a 200% increase in applicants.[18] One employer received 6,000 applications for a single role.[19] Sixty-eight percent of companies offering a four-day model report better talent attraction.[20] A 42% decrease in resignations among trial participants.[3] If these numbers came from a new sourcing platform, every TA team in Europe would be budgeting for it. They come from a scheduling change that costs nothing to implement. Man sieht den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht (one cannot see the forest for the trees).

What actually works: Lead with flexibility in job adverts — even if full four-day is not yet possible, any credible flexible model should be the first thing candidates see, not the last. The German trial found that flexibility was the single most effective tool for both attraction and retention.[21] Quantify the retention benefit for your CFO: if replacement hiring costs six figures per senior role — and it does — a structured flexibility programme pays for itself in the first year. Pilot it for the hardest-to-fill functions first: regulatory affairs, biostatistics, clinical data management, pharmacovigilance. These are the roles where candidate scarcity is most acute in DACH. A four-day pilot for these functions will produce both hiring results and internal data to justify scaling.

And stop waiting for legislation. Belgium legislated. Companies in Austria and Switzerland are moving without it. By the time a law mandates flexibility, it is compliance — not competitive advantage. Wer wartet, bis der Wind dreht, segelt nie (who waits for the wind to turn will never sail). The wind has turned. The data is in. Your competitors are reading this article too. Act accordingly.

A Word on the Four-Day Workweek Coaching Industry — Because Monetising Trends Is Humanity's Oldest Skill

As reliably as seagulls follow a fishing boat, a cottage industry of "four-day workweek consultants" has materialised on LinkedIn, offering to help you "design your ideal relationship with time" for a fee that, ironically, requires you to keep working five days a week to afford. Some of them have never managed a team. Some of them have never worked a day in a regulated industry. Most of them are repackaging the freely available trial data into a PDF with their logo on it and calling it a "proprietary framework."

Everything in this article — every data point, every source, every strategy — is free. The German trial results are published. The international evidence is public. You do not need a coach to explain what 73% means. You need the capacity to read, the courage to propose, and the professionalism to implement. Guter Rat ist teuer, schlechter Rat ist noch teurer (good advice is expensive, bad advice costs even more). The best advice on this topic costs nothing. It costs you reading this article, which you have nearly finished, and for which I thank you.

The Bottom Line. No Motivational Poster.

The four-day workweek is not arriving in DACH pharma tomorrow. It will not arrive uniformly. It will not work for every function, every shift, or every company. But the evidence from Germany's trial — and from every international pilot that has preceded it — is now so consistent that ignoring it is no longer a neutral position. It is a competitive choice. And like most competitive choices made on the basis of "we have always done it this way," it will age poorly.

For job seekers: the employers who are thinking about this are the employers worth thinking about. For recruiters: the maths is embarrassingly simple. For executives: someone in your organisation will propose this within eighteen months. You can be the person who shapes it, or the person who explains to the board why your best biostatistician just left for a company that offered Fridays off.

Germany spent €82 billion on sick leave in 2024. Its own trial reduced burnout by 64%. Seventy-three percent of companies do not want to go back. Manchmal liegt die Antwort so nah, dass man über sie stolpert (sometimes the answer is so close that you trip over it).

You are reading this. You are already ahead. Now do something about it before the long weekend arrives — metaphorically or literally.

Your Turn

This newsletter exists because of the conversations it starts. If you found this useful — or infuriating, which is also fine — the single most valuable thing you can do is answer one of these in the comments. Your answer helps other readers more than any algorithm ever will:

Does your employer offer any genuine flexibility? Or is it the kind that lives in the employee handbook and dies the moment a deadline appears?

If a competitor offered the same role, the same salary, and a four-day week — would you switch? Be brutally honest.

Recruiters: have you ever lost a candidate because of working time expectations? What happened? How much did it cost?

For the over-50 readers: does the four-day conversation change how you think about your next career chapter — or does it feel like a debate for a generation that did not have to build everything from scratch?

If you are not yet subscribed, you can do so directly via LinkedIn. Save this article, share it with someone who needs it, or simply close it and go back to pretending that the fifth day is adding value. The data will still be here when you change your mind.

Prost. Und bleibt standhaft. (Cheers. And stay resilient.)

#TeamBayer #MoreThanCareer #Pharmajobs #Recruiting #CareerAdvice #FourDayWorkweek

Sources

All reference numbers in the article correspond to the sources below. Click any link to access the original.

[1] 4 Day Week Global / University of Münster — Germany Four-Day Workweek Pilot Results (2024) — https://www.4dayweek.com/germany-2024-pilot-results

[2] Le Ravi — Germany Tested the Four-Day Workweek: 73% of Companies Won't Go Back (Sep 2025) — https://www.leravi.org/germany-tested-the-four-day-workweek-73-of-companies-wont-go-back-15033/

[3] Fortune — German Workers on 4-Day Week Slept Better, Exercised More, Burnout Down 64% (Nov 2024) — https://fortune.com/europe/2024/11/05/german-workers-4-day-workweek-trial-sleep-exercise-stress/

[4] German Economic Institute (IW) — Employer Sick Leave Costs Reached €82 Billion in 2024 — https://germanpedia.com/sick-leave-germany-2/

[5] VFA / Eulerpool — Sick Leave Costs German Economy Approx. €40 Billion per Year, GDP Impact Analysis (Jan 2026) — https://eulerpool.com/en/news/economics/sick-leave-becomes-growth-risk-for-germanys-economy

[6] Fortune / VFA — Without Above-Average Sick Days, Germany Would Have Grown 0.5% Instead of Contracting 0.3% (2024) — https://fortune.com/europe/article/german-bosses-blaming-economic-woes-work-shy-gen-z-calling-sick-nearly-20-times-year/

[7] The Local Austria — What Could a Four-Day Workweek Mean for Workers and Businesses in Austria? (Nov 2024) — https://www.thelocal.at/20241126/what-could-a-four-day-workweek-mean-for-workers-and-businesses-in-austria

[8] Lexology — Austria: Employment Trend — Four-Day Workweek (Legal Framework and Models) — https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=aebe52c3-6609-4d82-a8a4-ef5636b53370

[9] Schulmeister Consulting — 4-Day Workweek in Austria: What It Really Means for Employees (2025/2026) — https://www.schulmeister-consulting.de/en/magazine/overview/detail/4-day-workweek-in-austria-what-it-really-means-for-you-as-an-employee

[10] IamExpat Switzerland — Switzerland to Launch Its Largest-Ever 4-Day Week Trial (Apr 2024) — https://www.iamexpat.ch/career/employment-news/switzerland-launch-its-largest-ever-4-day-week-trial

[11] 4DayWeek.io — Switzerland Has the 4th Shortest Average Working Week Globally (34.6 hrs) — https://4dayweek.io/countries

[12] NBC News — Bernie Sanders Introduces Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act (Mar 2024) — https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/bernie-sanders-pushes-bill-establish-four-day-workweek-rcna143354

[13] Harris Sliwoski — China Employment Law 2025: 996 Is No Longer Okay (Enforcement Crackdown) — https://harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/china-employment-law-2025-996-is-no-longer-okay/

[14] Business Standard — China Clamps Down on 996 Overtime Culture, Tencent/DJI Enforce Early Departures (Jun 2025) — https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/china-work-culture-996-crackdown-70-hour-week-shift-125060400581_1.html

[15] India Employer Forum — China's 9-9-6 Work Culture vs India's Flexible Model (Apr 2025) — https://indiaemployerforum.org/world-of-work/chinas-9-9-6-work-culture-vs-indias-flexible-model/

[16] Entrepreneur — What Is 996? Silicon Valley Startups Embrace 72-Hour Workweeks (Sep 2025) — https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-996-silicon-valley-is-embracing-extreme-work-hours/497711

[17] World Economic Forum — Could a Four-Day Work Week Reshape the Labour Market? 92% Kept Policy (Oct 2025) — https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/10/four-day-week-work-jobs-and-skills/

[18] Great Place to Work — Bolt Saw 200% Increase in Applicants After Four-Day Switch (May 2025) — https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/the-four-day-work-week-debate

[19] Wonderlic — 6,000 Applications for Single Role; 2% Voluntary Turnover Over 36 Months (May 2025) — https://wonderlic.com/blog/human-resources/the-essential-guide-to-a-4-day-workweek-insights-results-and-considerations-from-wonderlics-experience/

[20] Henley Business School — 68% of Four-Day Workweek Businesses Report Better Talent Attraction — https://fieldsandrudd.com/blog/2022/12/the-impact-of-a-four-day-workweek-on-talent-attraction

[21] The HR Digest — German Four-Day Workweek Trial Success: Talent Attraction and Retention (Oct 2024) — https://www.thehrdigest.com/its-time-for-change-german-four-day-workweek-trial-is-a-success/

[22] BW People India — Germany's 4-Day Work Week Trial: 90%+ Well-Being Improvement Reported — https://www.bwpeople.in/article/germany%E2%80%99s-4-day-work-week-trial-shows-positive-impact-on-well-being-productivity-536810

© 2026 Andreas Schulz. All rights reserved.