Shortly after the worst of Covid had passed and people were no longer eyeing their colleagues as potential carriers of plague, Jacob Rees-Mogg, then a member of the Cabinet, left a note on his civil servants’ desks. “Sorry you were out when I visited,” it read. “I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.” Nobody was around when, Santa Claus-style, he delivered this far from subtle rebuke, since the office was entirely empty. Everyone was working from home.

The remote-working culture, which staff seemed to have embraced rather too enthusiastically, was Rees-Mogg’s target. No doubt his irritation eventually eased, as seats once more began to be filled, even if not for the entire working week. After all, the notion these days of being behind the desk from Monday to Friday is becoming as quaint as smoking a pipe. If the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union has its way, Rees-Mogg’s headed notepaper may soon have to be deployed again. Earlier this year the PCS called for the civil service to work a four-day week, without a drop in pay. So far, Westminster has no intention of agreeing to what some consider a preposterous demand.

By contrast, First Minister Humza Yousaf is keen to implement a four-day-week trial for Holyrood’s civil servants. The intention behind this pilot scheme, expected to begin by the end of the year, is to assess the “wellbeing, environmental, and productivity benefits” of reduced hours. Not for the first time Rees-Mogg finds himself wholly at odds with Holyrood.

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It might sound revolutionary, but for half a century the four-day week has been hailed as the holy grail of employer-employee relations. Back in the 1970s, the labour market was so buoyant it was believed people would be able to stop working around the age of 50, and they were urged to take up hobbies they could enjoy during their golden years of retirement. Although that decade endured the misery of the three-day week, the notion that people might work less than a full week and still reap all the advantages of full-pay and holidays seemed tantalisingly within reach. How crushing when those dreams faded, and the reality of Thatcher’s Britain kicked in.

Now, what once sounded like a pipe-dream appears to be coming to fruition, in some quarters at least. Various trials have concluded that by reducing workers’ hours by a full day, productivity can actually be improved. Not only are staff healthier and in better spirits, but their loyalty is enhanced, leading to fewer seeking jobs elsewhere, and fewer absences. A happy worker, it seems, is also a better worker in every sense.

Obviously, to compensate for grafting a fifth fewer hours, a basic 20% rise in productivity is required. Some years ago, however, Microsoft Japan found that such is the boost the four-day regime gave its employees, there was a staggering 40% rise in productivity. An increase in efficiency rather than intensity is the answer, or so goes the cheer-leading mantra of those advocating the four-day week. Yet nice though the theory is, it doesn’t work for everyone. The London tech firm Krystal, a cloud-hosting platform, has just cancelled its six-month four-day trial, which started in June. It claims the scheme, which it was hoped would improve staff morale and productivity, instead has proved a failure. On Monday, it returned to the traditional five-day regime, to all-round sighs of relief.

Writing to clients to apologise for any drop in service standards they might have experienced during the trial, Krystal’s founder explained: “While the team fought admirably to keep on top of work… it came at a cost – work time was much more stressful than before. The opposite of what we were trying to accomplish.”

Interest in a four-day week, whether it brings benefits or causes ulcers, could be read as a symptom rather than a driver of changing attitudes to work. Today, hybrid working is the norm in many businesses – including the civil service - with employees allowed to do at least one day a week from home, and often more. With increasing pressure for a shorter week, are we witnessing the modern-day version of the Peasants’ Revolt? After Covid, employees realised not only that there is another way to get the job done - at a welcome distance from bosses - but that there is more to life than being chained to a desk, and they intend to claim it.

Given the UK’s precarious economic situation, some taskmasters would rather see a six-day week than one slashed to four. Of course, across all sectors, some people are already using weekends and evenings to catch up on their work, without any question of overtime or time in lieu. In light of this, the idea that increased efficiency will make week-long jobs a thing of the past is hard to fathom. As Krystal’s employees found, five simply couldn’t be squeezed into four.

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However, if a four-day culture does take hold, and business continues to run as profitably as before, this surely raises questions about how effectively people have been working up till now. Efficiency can trim only so many corners. Have staff been so wearied by their full working week that they have been unconsciously winding down, like a grandfather clock? Or, to put it another way, if being more organised allows the same workload to be dealt with in fewer hours, isn’t it odd that, in a time of intense pressure on budgets, managers have not already spotted the need to inject a bit more urgency or speed?

But it’s not all about efficiency. One of the problems of hybrid working, people say, is that they miss out on office chat and those casual conversations that spark ideas. A shorter working week would not see an end to all such encounters, but with an eye on the clock as never before, there will certainly be less leeway for seemingly idle but restorative and useful encounters.

There’s no denying that attitudes towards work, and its place in our lives, are gradually shifting, in part because of the clamour for a better life-work balance. Once, a job was seen as the shaping force of our lives, around which everything must necessarily, if sometimes reluctantly, revolve. Now, rather than being seen as a challenge to be embraced, it’s in danger of being viewed as a problem to be solved.