Working time reduction: barriers, challenges, benefits and policy implications

Projects should contribute to at least three of the following:
1. Deepened understanding among policymakers, employers, trade unions and other stakeholders of the impacts and implementation of working-time reduction, including its social, economic and environmental implications;
2. Evidence-based recommendations for policymakers on the feasibility of implementing working-time reduction across all types of economic activity and occupations, while promoting positive macroeconomic outcomes;
3. Practical guidance and data for relevant stakeholders (social partners, SMEs, large companies, public authorities) on the enablers and barriers to successful implementation of working-time reduction at employer and employee levels;
4. Improved insight into the potential of working-time reduction to boost employment and labour-market inclusion by activating under-represented groups (women, the elderly, workers with disabilities and others).

- Research focus on a coordinated reduction in weekly working hours concentrated into an extra free day per week, with no corresponding decrease in pay;
• Impact assessment along at least two of three axes: economic, social and environmental;
• Sectoral and occupational coverage to test feasibility and generalisability across different types of economic activity and firm sizes;
• Inclusion of a gender perspective and explicit analysis of labour-market inclusion for under-represented groups;
• Consideration of environmental outcomes (energy costs and savings, energy poverty, consumption patterns, emissions);
• Use of a variety of SSH research methods: quantitative micro-economic analysis, behavioural experiments and other social science approaches;
• Mandatory use of data and services from European Research Infrastructures and EOSC federated Data Spaces, producing FAIR data;
• Alignment with the destination “Innovative Research on Social and Economic Transformations” and relevant EU policy objectives.