Great interest in the four-day week
The list of people who have contacted her Chair, asking for quotes and results of the study, is endless. “But the most unusual was an enquiry from a children’s radio series,” says Prof. Julia Backmann, whose research project was explained in the children’s news there. As soon as her pilot study on the four-day week got going, her telephone never stopped ringing. She was even invited to the state of North-Rhine Westphalia’s press conference in mid-October to present the results of the study. After the conference, the pilot study team split up over several rooms in the state parliament building in Düsseldorf. No sooner had one call finished than the phone started ringing again. Backmann was often in front of cameras or microphones, explaining the results of the study. “And we’re still getting enquiries,” she says. She is also delighted that many of the companies want to try out or retain the new working time model beyond the six-month project period. When she put the producers of the children’s radio series through to Dr. Felix Hoch, the co-leader of the study, it was a sign on her part of appreciation of her team. “The project is a team effort – with two habilitation candidates, two PhD students and 17 students on master’s degree courses. Several of us dealt with media enquiries,” says Backmann.
“It’s a very emotional topic, and we have had corresponding reactions to it,” Backmann reports. The pilot study showed that well-being increases when working time decreases, with productivity remaining constant or even rising slightly. The four-day week led to a significant positive change in people’s satisfaction with their lives, and this resulted mainly from having additional free time,” she explains. In advance of the pilot project, 64 percent of employees expressed a wish to spend more time with their families. After the four-day week was introduced, this figure went down to 50 percent. “We have to be careful that these results are not over-interpreted,” Backmann concedes, “but it’s nice to see a scientific study having such an effect.” 45 organisations from different sectors took part in the pilot project on the introduction of the four-day week, carried out with project partners Intraprenör – a management consultancy in Berlin – and the “4 Day Week Global” organisation. The employees themselves drew up measures to implement it – whether through more effective meetings or the use of digital tools. Julia Backmann was surprised at how enthusiastic the employees went about the task. “Such a degree of motivation is not usually achieved in change processes,” she says. She is currently examining whether the stress levels of those involved during the project period changed not only subjectively but also objectively. This was based on 600 qualitative interviews, data from fitness trackers and cortisol measurements in hair samples, which a laboratory at the University Hospital analysed.
Julia Backmann has been familiar with entrepreneurial thinking since her childhood, as her parents had a joinery firm in the Münsterland. She chose to study European business at Münster University of Applied Sciences and the University of Portsmouth, following with a master’s degree in human resource management at the London School of Economics. “I always wanted to see the world,” she says. After spending time at University College Dublin, in consultancy work, at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and at the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität München, as well as several research stays abroad, including Japan and Australia, what attracted Backmann to the Professorship for the Transformation of Work was that the position had been newly created. “It’s like virgin territory: I can develop ideas from scratch and push forward with innovative ideas.” When she returned to her homeland in 2022, she also fulfilled a wish she had long had: to have a dog of her own. She now takes her Miniature American Shepherd for long walks from home or after leaving her office on Schlossplatz. Or she teaches him tricks. “My dog can do every trick in the world …” she says.
Brigitte Heeke
This article is from the brochure "Twelve months, twelve people", published in February 2025.
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