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Asda has shelved plans for a four-day week after staff claimed it left them feeling exhausted.
The supermarket had introduced flexible working arrangements in a bid to stamp out a revolt among disgruntled store managers, but a four-day week pilot has now been scrapped after staff said they were unhappy with the changes.
Those involved in the pilot, which took place in 20 Asda stores, worked a 44-hour week over four days instead of five for the same pay.
The condensed hours led to complaints from staff that the longer shifts were “physically demanding” and left them exhausted on their day off.
Others argued that it was hard to meet the earlier start and later finish times of the four-day week shift while parents said it created “difficulties with childcare and school drop offs and pick-ups”.
An Asda spokesman said that a pilot which involves doing 39 hours in five days has proved more popular and will run until the end of the year. Employees will not receive any reduction in pay despite the shorter hours.
The move comes as Domestic & General (D&G), a household appliance specialist employing 3,000 people, received similar feedback from staff after it tested out a four-day week.
Matthew Crummack, chief executive of D&G, told The Telegraph that the pilot left employees feeling exhausted and “psychologically” drained.
“Half the team absolutely loved it, half of the team didn’t like it at all – it makes for a longer day, it’s a bit more intense,” he said. “For them, spreading the work across five was easier to manage psychologically.”
Despite concerns about burnout among some of those involved in the pilot, a spokesman said the shift did lead to an increase in sales per hour and fewer sick days. “We may run it again with adjustments,” he said.
The private-equity backed company is instead piloting “school run” hours so that parents can work in between school drop-off times, from 9.30am until 2.30pm. In September, 30 staff at the company will take part in a trial where they work term-time hours only.
In the run-up to the election there was a growing demand from unions to make a four-day working week an official policy, although Labour is expected to resist those demands.
Party insiders insisted last week that there were no plans to go down that route.
A senior adviser said: “It’s a decision for individual businesses.
“It’s not in any conversation that I have had, or in any manifesto-level conversations.”
Cutting working hours was a flagship policy when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader. He vowed to move to a 32-hour week within a decade as part of his manifesto for 2019’s election.
In his speech at the Labour Party’s conference in Brighton that year, John McDonnell, the then shadow chancellor, promised that a Labour government would “reduce the average full-time working week” as Britons “work some of the longest hours in Europe”.
A decision from Sir Keir Starmer not to make a four-day week official policy will likely disappoint one of Labour’s biggest backers, Unison, after its members led last month’s calls for the right to a four-day working week with no hit to pay.
Labour has yet to publicly spell out its stance, with one four-day-week activist saying that the “official position is watching brief”.
Although the party is not expected to back any formal policy on the four-day week, deputy leader Angela Rayner last year urged hundreds of bosses to consider the results of a major trial into the idea.
More than 3,000 people working for 61 businesses tested out a shorter week with no loss of pay in 2022 as part of a nationwide pilot aimed at transforming working life in Britain.
Researchers concluded that sick days dropped 65pc while revenue increased.