The four -day week, long perceived as a managerial utopia, has established itself as a real test object for several French companies. Not as an ideological response, but as a concrete hypothesis in the face of recruitment, mental load or post-health reorganization issues. After a year of implementation, some companies derive the first observations of this rocking: real gains in attractiveness and commitment, but also complex adjustments and difficult arbitrations. This model, far from being universal, reveals as much as it transforms the foundations of work organization.
A cultural shock first internal
In January 2022, the Design Alan & Co agency decided to officially spend four days of weekly work. The team, about fifteen people, opted for a collective closure on Wednesday. From the first weeks, the positive effects are felt: more concentration in meeting, less absenteeism, renewed motivation. But behind these encouraging signals, management quickly identifies an imbalance. Certain support functions, such as accounting or customer relations, struggle to absorb the peaks of activity on compressed days.
Rather than going back, the company chooses to reorganize roles: certain missions are redistributed between several employees, and non -strategic tasks are outsourced. This rewriting of perimeters becomes a full HR site. The transition to the four -day week acts as a revealer of structural weaknesses: dependence on certain people, poor prioritization, ineffective habits. By answering it, the organization is gaining clarity, far beyond the framework of working time.
An immediate employer brand effect
At LDLC, Lyonnaise company specializing in IT distribution, the transition to the four -day week is set up in January 2021. The system concerns 1,000 employees, without a significant salary drop or extension of the days. The impact on the employer brand is immediate. Applications are increasing, employee retention is progressing, and internal surveys reveal a better perception of personal life/personal life. The device becomes a central element of HR discourse.
But the window effect is not enough. The company must also meet operational issues: some teams cannot afford to be absent for an entire day. The model is therefore adapted according to the trades: work in pairs for customer service, rotations on logistics schedules. What was presented as a uniform measure becomes a palette of developments, negotiated locally. This flexibility of application is one of the sustainability conditions of the device, which is less based on an absolute rule than on an ability to adjust.
A performance under surveillance
The Intuiti digital agency, based in Nantes, switches to the four -day week at the end of 2021. One of the objectives displayed is to improve concentration without sacrificing performance. After twelve months, the indicators are divided: the satisfaction of the teams is clearly increasing, but some projects are late. A fine analysis reveals that coordination times have compressed themselves, with more dense but also more fragmented exchanges.
Faced with this observation, the agency introduces occasional “extended days” for certain critical phases, on the basis of volunteering. The challenge is to maintain collective efficiency without calling into question the global balance. This intermediate measure becomes a safety net appreciated by the teams, who see it as proof of confidence and flexibility. The company does not come back to the principle of short week, but registered it in an evolutionary framework, capable of absorbing load variations and occasional emergencies.
More autonomous teams, but not always aligned
The transition to the four -day week also modifies the internal dynamics. At Welcome to the Jungle, which has tested the device on part of its workforce, some managers note a rise in autonomy, but also a form of desynchronization between the poles. The decision cycles are getting longer, some files await validations that do not come immediately, and collective times are scarce. This destructuring of the pace obliges the company to review its internal rituals: reintroduction of fixed collective time, more systematic documentation of decisions, strict limitation of inter-team emergencies.
This tension reveals a nerve point: the four -day week cannot work without a high level of organizational maturity. It is not so much the reduction of working time that poses a problem, as the ability to anticipate, structure and delegate. It is these skills that condition the success of the model, much more than the nature of the missions themselves.
Gains where we did not expect it
Over the months, some companies discover that the profits of the four -day week are housed in unexpected dimensions. At Shine, the device has led to a significant drop in internal micro-conflicts. Fewer days worked, it is also less friction, fewer secondary discussions, and a requirement of increased clarity in exchanges. This dynamic obliges teams to prioritize, to formulate their requests more precisely, and to limit non -essential interruptions.
This change in pace is not just a social advantage. He acts as a lever of professionalization, by empowering each on the management of his time and the clarity of his contribution. This new requirement has resulted, in several cases, by a redesign of collaboration methods: removal of certain communication channels, introduction of self-management tools, and reduction of the number of synchronization points.
A new grammar of working time
In the structures that have permanently adopted the four -day week, it is not only the development of the calendar that evolves, but all of the organizational benchmarks. At Slite, collaborative documentation platform, the experimentation of the short pace caused a progressive rebalancing between measurable output and relational availability. Some employees, freed from a formal working day, have used this time to train, think about new products or offer different transmission formats. This phenomenon prompted the company to expand its evaluation criteria: the individual impact is no longer measured only in deliverables, but also in capacity to create fluid working conditions for others.
In one year, HR had to adapt their annual maintenance grid, integrate more flexible qualitative indicators, and redefine what it means to “contribute” in a reduced environment. It is in this fine redefinition that the model takes root: less visible than an ad reducing working time, but more structuring in the long term. For companies that choose to stick to it, four -day week acts as a revealer of collective maturity, as much as a lever for cultural transformation.
