A natural fear is that by reducing the amount of work each employee tackles at any given time, it might reduce the total amount of work an organization is able

A natural fear is that by reducing the amount of work each employee tackles at any given time, it might reduce the total amount of work an organization is able to complete, making it less competitive. This fear is unfounded. As argued, when an individual’s work volume increases, so does the accompanying overhead and stress, reducing both the time remaining to actually execute the tasks and the quality of the results. The real question is whether these conditions produce a 20% reduction in productivity that would equate to the productivity of a 4-day work week. I'm not convinced, and have not come across compelling studies that quantify productivity increased of a 4-day work week. In particular, my own anecdotal experience where my organization works 4-days a week during the Summer is increased stress due to fewer hours to complete a set of tasks that do not decrease with the the decreased office time. I instead often find myself feeling nervous about tasks unfinished and often end up putting in time during the 3 non-work days. Alternatively the author implies that simply assigning less work could be the answer, but to address that and related issues: I am not saying that a 4-day work week shouldn't be considered, but I am skeptical that it could be implemented without increasing employee headcount accordingly. That complicates things then as increased salary costs impact product prices-- a regressive increase that impacts lower paid workers more than others. So increased wages could also be necessary, but that (hopefully to a lesser extent) feeds back into those same increased labor costs. Working out these issues is a package deal.