If you call Bike Citizens on a Friday, you will only get the answering machine.

Because on Fridays, all 35 employees of the Graz-based developer and provider of a navigation app for bicycles are free.

Since 2014, all of the company's employees have only worked 36 of the 38.5 weekly working hours that are most common in Austria - and only from Monday to Thursday.

"In the beginning it was a change for me to work nine hours a day on just four days," says Tanja Koller, who has been on board since the end of 2020.

But the company's 25-year-old human resources manager quickly got used to the new working hours and now appreciates them very much.

“At my previous employers, I often worked in shifts between 6 a.m. and midnight, including weekends.

That often made switching off difficult.”

Today, she and her colleagues enjoy doing the weekly shopping in pleasantly empty supermarkets on Friday, completing the sports program in deserted fitness studios or enjoying excursions far away from weekend tourism.

Or dedicating Friday to volunteer work, like a colleague who works a night shift every month for the emergency services.

Companies from Bielefeld to Belgium are there

The Graz company is no longer the only one out there that has introduced a reduction in working hours.

The digital agency and management consultancy Rheingans from Bielefeld, founded in 2017, has been on everyone’s lips for a long time.

Founder Lasse Rheingans quickly became the first entrepreneur in Germany to introduce the five-hour day – with a full salary and holiday entitlement.

A success story for him, about which he wrote a book in 2019 to inspire others.

Jan Eppers, founder of the PR and social media agency "Frische Fische" with offices in Dresden and Berlin, approached his 15 employees in 2015 with the idea of ​​splitting their working hours over four days - albeit optional.

In addition, he allowed everyone to choose freely what their day off should be.

Those who decided against it usually had families and could not reconcile the longer working days that resulted from the concentration with the childcare times, as he writes on the agency blog.

The fear of not being able to be contacted in an industry in which constant availability is almost the law proved to be unfounded: the customers were informed and either showed understanding – or even interest.

"Two customers have evaluated themselves whether and how they can adjust their working hours towards a four-day week," writes Eppers.

The eye of the needle remains the will of the company

But not only companies that are considered innovative due to their business model, such as digital or marketing agencies, have discovered the reduction or increase in working hours for themselves.

With the building technology company Hempfling from Prebitz in Franconia, a craft business recently switched to 36 hours spread over four days - with the same wages and a lower CO2 balance, since the company cars are parked on Fridays, as reported in the local press.

And the employees of an entire country should in future be able to do their work on just four days a week if they wish: After tough negotiations, the Belgian government agreed on a four-day week in February of this year - without reducing the weekly working hours.

Instead, everyone should be able to spread the usual 38 hours a week over just four days, and the salary will then remain the same.