Covid gave us hybrid work. The Iran War might give us a four-day week—and this time, experts say it could stick

COVID-19 gave us hybrid work. The Iran War might give us a three-day weekend. That’s because, as Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Pakistan move to a 4-day work week because of the war in Iran, experts say we’re the closest we’ve ever been to a permanent shorter workweek.

Recommended Video

It started in Asia. Now leaders in the West are sweating too. In a rare address to the nation today, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned the “economic shocks” of the Iran war “will be felt for months,” and encouraged people to take public transport where they could—to preserve fuel for farmers, trade workers, and shift workers who have no choice but to drive to work.

Hours later, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the nation on the broader economic impact of the war. And across the Channel, the European Commission has just urged citizens to work from home, drive and fly less, and called on EU member states to urgently accelerate the rollout of renewables.

None of them mentioned a four-day week. But the direction of travel is unmistakable: one by one, governments are being forced to reckon with the same energy crisis, as the war in the Middle East threatens vital oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

What began as an emergency measure in the developing world is now spreading globally. Sound familiar? We’ve been here before: The last time the world was forced to shift en masse—the pandemic—the changes we thought would be temporary became permanent. Hybrid work didn’t die when offices reopened. Instead, it reshaped how we work.

Now, with governments reaching for the same lever again, experts say something similar could happen with a four-day workweek. But it’ll come with major consequences for those who can’t take their jobs home, like drivers, baristas, window cleaners, pet sitters, and more.

Will an overnight emergency four-day week come to the West?

Although Brits and Australians are being urged by envirnmontal agency’s to work from home, Dr. Wladislaw Rivkin, professor in organisational behaviour at Trinity Business School, told Fortune a global three-day weekend currently looks unlikely—at least not at the click of the government’s fingers.

That’s because a permanent restructuring of how work is organized is a far heavier lift than an overnight shift to working from a makeshift home office.

“I do not see this as a model for the U.S. and U.K., at least in the long term, because the current sharp rise in fuel costs is temporary,” Rivkin says.

Professor Roberta Aguzzoli at Durham University Business School says she wouldn’t rule out the West moving to shorter workweeks to save fuel, but she argues better infrastructure should minimise that need.

“Public transport systems in large European cities are generally more developed and less reliant on individual transport use than those in certain emerging economies,” she says, adding that limited transport infrastructure and higher exposure to fuel price volatility make last-minute policy changes more necessary.

On that basis, she says a permanent four-day week in the near term is more likely to become the new norm in developing countries. But there’s a big but. The mere fact that millions of workers are about to spend an extended period proving they can get the job done in four days could be the tipping point the movement has been waiting for.

Why Asia’s four-day week could permanently change how the world works

Whether Asia’s emergency four‑day workweek will have the same lasting effect as the pandemic’s work-from-home mandate, or even ripple into Europe and the U.S., remains to be seen. But once workers get a taste of a shorter week—even a forced one—it’s a hard sell to go back to the old one.

“Remote work didn’t spread because companies planned it,” says William Self, chief workforce strategist at Mercer. “It spread because the pandemic crisis forced the experiment, the experiment worked, and workers weren’t willing to give back what they’d gained. The same logic applies here.”

Self argues that once the experiment runs, the burden of proof flips: “If employers experiment with a four-day workweek and employees show they can deliver in four days what they previously delivered in five, management has to justify the fifth day rather than the other way around.”

What makes this moment historically distinct, he says, is the convergence of two previously separate conversations.

“Previously, a four-day workweek was mostly theoretical or confined to a handful of pilot programmes. Now you have some governments weighing in as a matter of public policy and major employers adopting it, and they’re doing so in the same news cycle,” he says. “That’s a different situation than we’ve been in before.”

Add AI rewriting what productivity means, a cost-of-living crisis, stagnant wages and workers who’ve already had a taste of flexibility, and the pressure for more flexible ways of working is converging from every direction at once.

Emergency or n