Corporate America is starting to embrace the 4-day workweek. These 7 companies have adopted it or are considering the change

A startup office on March 24, 2021 in San Francisco, California.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

• Some companies are allowing staff to work only four days a week to combat pandemic burnout.
• Kickstarter is the latest to say that it would test a four-day workweek, starting in 2022.
• Proponents of it say the permanent three-day weekend boosts happiness and productivity.

Employee burnout is real, and the pandemic has reignited talk of how modern work should evolve.

Among the loudest of the chatter is the four-day workweek concept.

Some companies adopted the structure before the pandemic, like Microsoft Japan, which famously tried out a four-day workweek in mid-2019 and saw productivity jump by 40%.

But scores of others have taken interest in the approach as the pandemic has battered employees' mental health, sending stress and burnout levels skyrocketing.

As The Atlantic reported, the four-day workweek could be the next inevitable evolution of work. In the early 1900s, the weekend was invented, and trade groups pushed back on it at the time, saying it would coddle employees and "subordinate" the importance of work. Now the weekend is a concrete part of our lives.

Here are the companies that have either toyed with or straight-out adopted allowing their employees to work just four days a week since March 2020.