Australian study: 14 of 15 firms kept the four-day week after 100:80:100 trial

A Deakin University study published in Nature’s Humanities and Social Sciences Communications tracked 15 Australian companies running the 100:80:100 model — full pay, 80% of hours, same output target — between 2022 and 2024. Fourteen kept the shorter week after the trial. None reported a productivity drop, and six saw measurable gains. Companies spanned property management, publishing, and health tech, and each was allowed to define productivity on its own terms, from revenue to attrition to net promoter score.

The lead researcher, Professor John Hopkins, argues the model works because it forces an honest audit of how time is spent: redundant meetings, low-value tasks, and automatable work get stripped out before the schedule changes, so employees do four days of focused work rather than five days crammed into four. Burnout reduction, not raw output, was the primary motivator for six of the firms — relevant in a country where a 2025 Beyond Blue survey found half of workers report burnout. Client-facing firms staggered days off rather than closing one day a week.

Hopkins frames the model as one answer to a looming question: where do the productivity gains from AI actually go? Returning them to workers as time is one option. The researchers flag honest caveats — possible novelty effects in short trials, and structural difficulty in healthcare, logistics, emergency services, and hospitality, where fixed schedules don’t bend the same way knowledge work does.