The 4-day week is coming for South Africa. What we're telling clients to think about now.

The data from the UK, Iceland, Belgium and Portugal 4-day-week pilots is in. The shorter pattern is this: companies that ran six-month pilots overwhelmingly chose to keep the model. Productivity held or improved. Voluntary turnover dropped. Sick days dropped. The candidates who joined those companies during the pilot didn't leave.

South Africa is not where the UK is on this yet. We're maybe 18 to 24 months behind the curve as a market. But we're not three years behind. The conversation is starting to happen at SA companies in our pipeline, and we think it'll be a real hiring lever within the next two years.

We're not advocating that every business move to a 4-day week tomorrow. We are advocating that you start thinking about what your version of the answer is, before the question becomes a salary deal-breaker on every senior offer you make.

What we're noticing on the candidate side

Senior professionals — particularly in tech, finance, professional services and creative work — are now openly asking about hours and flexibility on the second or third call. They're not necessarily asking for a 4-day week explicitly. They're asking whether the company has a position on work patterns. The companies that say "we work Monday to Friday, full time, in office" sound, to a senior candidate, like the companies that were saying "we don't have email yet" in 2003. The candidate is making an inference about the company's modernity from the answer.

The companies in our pipeline that are starting to win senior offers tend to be the ones that have something specific to say. "We're 4-day-week from June." Or "we trial it in Q3 and review." Or "we don't do 4-day, but we have unlimited leave and we mean it — here's the average leave our team took last year." Specificity beats vagueness.

A small admission. We don't run Afrikye on a 4-day week. We're two people and the work doesn't allow it yet. But we've started having the conversation between ourselves about what a four-day version of our model would look like, and we don't think it's impossible. If we were a 12-person agency, we'd be running the pilot now.

The practical advice

Don't ignore the topic. Decide your position. Communicate it on your careers page and in your hiring conversations. If your answer is "we're not there yet," be specific about what you do offer instead — leave policy, hybrid pattern, hours flexibility, summer Fridays, whatever it is. A defined "no" beats a vague "maybe."

The companies that already have a 4-day week answer in 2027 will pick from a meaningfully better talent pool than the companies that don't. That's not speculation. That's the pattern the UK pilots have already shown. The SA version is on its way.

— Kern & Monique