Sophie Wilson
When leaders discuss the four-day work week, the conversation usually starts with skepticism.
Is the timing right?
Can it work at scale?
Can productivity really hold under a compressed week?
At Today Digital, we moved past the “why” a while ago. Planning began in 2022. We’re now heading into 2026, with a larger team, sharper workflows, and a four-day work week that’s no longer an experiment – it’s just how the business runs.
So, the more interesting question became this:
After three years of real-world operation, what has been one benefit for our team?
If anyone can answer this, it’s Rob Scott, founder of Today Digital, and pioneer of the 4DWW.
Rob doesn’t frame it as a culture play.
“The biggest thing it does is focus everyone on what matters. You’ve got less time, but the same expectations – so you have to be far more intentional about how you work.”
That focus turns out to be the foundation everything else sits on.
The Four-Day Work Week Breaks Bad Work Fast
For leaders still watching this trend from a distance, skepticism is healthy.
After all, cutting a day from the week sounds like a productivity gamble – until you look at the data. In the UK’s largest four-day work week trial, 92% of participating organisations chose to continue after the pilot ended, with productivity holding steady or improving.
But Rob argues the real shift is about exposure.
“What surprised me most was how unorganised the five-day week actually was. You suddenly think: what did I do with all that time?”
Friday afternoons. Status meetings. Work stretching to fill the space available.
Why meetings, workflows, and slow decisions don’t survive compression. Once leaders move beyond curiosity, the next question is more practical:
What actually changes when you take 20% of the time away?
The answer, it turns out, is everything – starting with meetings.
“You have to take an axe to your meetings, async becomes essential.”
In a four-day model, there’s no room for performative alignment. Information has to move faster, decisions have to be clearer, and people need time to think before they meet – not while someone reads a deck aloud.
Studies consistently show that excessive meetings reduce productivity and increase cognitive load, while asynchronous collaboration improves focus and autonomy.
But efficiency has a dark side – especially for creative organisations. Rob explains:
“We’re a creative business, and when you compress the week, you realise how little thinking space you’ve got if you’re not careful.”
This is the moment many four-day work week pilots fail. Optimise too aggressively, and creativity becomes collateral damage. The fix is to design white space deliberately.
Impacts On Wellbeing
This is often where the narrative turns soft. But Rob is careful not to oversell it.
“We didn’t go into this thinking life would suddenly get easier. If we’d just dropped hours by 20%, we’d have gone backwards.”
The commitment was explicit: same (or higher) output, fewer days. That required the right mindset and the right people.
Still, the benefits are hard to ignore.
Large-scale trials have shown reduced stress, lower burnout, and improved life satisfaction among employees working four days. Some studies also report up to 65% reductions in sick days (Science daily).
So what actually reduces fatigue – fewer hours, or better recovery?
Rob’s experience suggests it’s the latter. The four-day work week hasn’t lowered expectations at Today Digital. If anything, it’s increased focus. But the three-day weekend creates a genuine psychological reset – one that prevents fatigue from accumulating week after week.
“People go hard Monday to Thursday. But the three-day weekend is the gift. That reset is huge. Once people start enjoying three-day weekends, you don’t want to let that go.”
AI As An Enabler Of The Four Day Work Week
When I asked Rob how the business managed to sustain the four-day model as it scaled, he didn’t point to culture slogans or productivity hacks.
He pointed to insight – and speed.
“AI ran alongside this project really nicely. We were able to analyse workflows, spot gaps, and understand how the business actually operated – quickly.”
That word matters: quickly.
In a four-day work week, leaders don’t have the luxury of slow transformation. Workflows need to be visible. Bottlenecks need to surface fast. Decisions need to be made with evidence, not instinct.
AI helped Today Digital do things that would previously have taken months:
- Analyse operating procedures and workstreams
- Identify inefficiencies across teams
- Turn conversations and transcripts into usable insight
- Sense-check assumptions about how work actually flows
As Rob put it during our interview:
“It’s like having 10 PhDs on your laptop.”
It’s about removing friction at the exact point where most four-day work week experiments fail: execution.
Maintaining the Model: Why AI Matters Long-Term
This is the part many leaders underestimate.
A four-day work week isn’t something you implement once and admire. It’s something you maintain, week after week, as teams grow, roles evolve, and priorities shift.
And without visibility, compressed systems degrade fast.
Rob is clear-eyed about AI’s role here:
“AI helps you think faster. It doesn’t think for you.”
In practice, that means using AI to:
- Continuously review workflows as the business changes
- Speed up documentation and knowledge sharing in async environments
- Reduce the cognitive load of admin, reporting, and planning
- Give leaders faster feedback loops without adding meetings
But it also means not outsourcing thinking.
“You still have to sense-check it.”
That balance – AI for acceleration, humans for judgement – is what makes the four-day work week sustainable rather than brittle.
Without it, leaders risk slipping back into five-day behaviours inside a four-day container.
Final Question: What Advice Would You Give Leaders Considering This Now?
For leaders considering whether to implement a four-day work week, Rob’s advice is characteristically forward-looking:
“I’d say aim for a three-day work week. Anything’s possible.”
It’s provocative – but it reflects where this is heading.
With AI, automation, and robotics accelerating, the future of work isn’t about protecting the five-day week. It’s about designing organisations that produce outcomes efficiently, sustainably, and intelligently.
The four-day work week isn’t the end state.
It’s the proving ground.
Want to be a part of this kind of workplace? Explore the careers available at Today Digital today. Or, if you’re looking for more advance as a business leader, connect with our HR team.
