There has been little appetite among Belgian employers to participate in a pilot study on the four-day working week, with only five organisations committing to take part in the pilot experiment.
The Federal Planning Bureau has reported that while several dozen companies and organisations initially expressed interest in the programme and it had expected around ten to take part, the number who have committed to the pilot has fallen to just five.
The pilot scheme, being conducted by the Bureau on behalf of the Federal Government, will study the effects of a four-day work week on private sector companies and organisations, where employees will work reduced hours but remain on the same wage for a six month period. The project will study the effects of a shorter workweek on factors such as employee welfare, productivity, employment and the environment.
Initially, some 500 participants attended webinars as part of the recruitment campaign for the pilot, and by February of this year around a dozen employers expressed interest in the initial "preparation phase" of the study.
Ten employers began the preparation phase in March, which involved a number of information sessions about the expectations for companies and organisations participating in the study.
However, after these information sessions, half of the companies pulled out of the pilot after realising the extent of the new model's impact, including the cumbersome legal and technical procedures involved in the transition.
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While the five organisations still taking part in the pilot have not been named, the Federal Planning Bureau has clarified that they are mostly NGOs (non-government organisations).
The study, which is being conducted in collaboration with Ghent University, will begin in May, with results due by April next year. Employees in Belgium have had the option to work a four-day week rather than five since late 2022, as part of a Labour Deal that sought to improve work-life balance.
However, statistics from the end of 2023 suggest the uptake has underwhelming so far, with less than 0.8% of eligible Belgians making the transition to a four-day workweek.
