No more weekends for you. You’re welcome. Five day, 40-hour workweeks have been the standard since 1926 — and we have Henry Ford to thank (or blame) for that. But over the past few years, we’ve been witnessing a shift — more employers are slowly adopting a 32-hour four-day work week after research (pdf) reached a consensus: employees who worked four days were significantly happier and more productive than those who worked traditional hours. But now, four-day work weeks might be old news… How do you feel about working the whole week instead?

It’s not an overcorrection, it’s doubling down. A few weeks ago, Aled Nelmes, founder and CEO of Welsh search marketing agency Lumen, took to LinkedIn to announce that they will be letting go of the four-day work week in favor for a seven-day workweek — an opener that at first glance would imply that the company is letting traditional work weeks win. But a second glance shows Nelmes wanting to double down on the flexibility offered by the four-day model. Nelmes cited an uptick in mental health, output quality, and retention due to their four-day workweeks, and sought to take it further with a flexible seven-day workweek trial.

Instead of enforcing a 32-hour four-day work week, Nelmes is letting his team decide when they want to work their 32-hours. This essentially means that Lumen employees could now work any time, anywhere, with no set schedule enforced. The CEO notes in his post that work should be a life-enhancing experience, integrated with daily life in a more fluid manner — he emphasizes that this change will support high performers, ease the burden on parents, and allow women more flexibility in regards to working during menstrual periods.

What’s the catch? Well, there doesn’t seem to be one yet — but there needs to be some coordination to get this to actually work. According to the Financial Times, Lumen’s new system will see tasks assigned at the beginning of each week, with a system letting everyone know who’s presently available and who’s not. Aside from two-three hours per week where everyone needs to be online, the world is your time-managed oyster.

So far, it seems Lumen is walking this experimental path alone — and time has yet to prove whether or not the experiment will work. As RTO mandates increase and remote jobs prove more difficult to find, it’s not looking too sunny on flexibility lane for employees craving change worldwide — but it’s not all bad news. FT notes that job postings mentioning four-day work weeks have “noticeably” increased since 2020 — though it’s also pivotal to note that they still make up less than 1% of all job postings across the US, Germany, France, Canada and the UK. 32-hour work weeks unbound by days are a dream — one that has come true for a select few in Wales, but unlikely to manifest itself exponentially — or globally — any time soon.

Could companies in Om El Donia follow Nelmes’ example? Improbable? Yes. Impossible? No. Egypt’s long-awaited labor act — passed in April 2025 and expected to come into effect in October 2025 — officially recognizes modern ways of working, including remote work, part-time contracts, flexible and split-hour arrangements.

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