I wonder what excuse they used to shut it down
To shut down what? By design, that was a short trial:
The company introduced a program this summer in Japan called the “Work Life Choice Challenge,” which shut down its offices every Friday in August and gave all employees an extra day off each week.
And like any short trial, it doesn’t answer the question whether the increased productivity would stay over longer periods of time. Other trials suggest that it wouldn’t.
Even if productivity turns out to be the same, the 4-day work week would be better.
They didn’t really cancel it, it kept going through corona when the entire staff went remote so the conversation stopped cause everyone was kind of working on their own desired time anyway.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2ExgMVZcE
Microsoft continues to do full remote and “hybrid” (only coming into the office once or twice a week) work schedules depending on your position and responsibilities.
Edit: I also wanted to add some clarity about Japan’s labor laws and how they interfere with a more “lax” labor schedule.
Japan requires employers submit the actual working schedules of employees and proof that they’re working those schedules (usually either time cards) as a way to prevent overwork.
This obviously doesn’t work in many cases because bosses will force their employees to work past their time clocks in or work during nomikais.
And on the other hand, this prevents teams in larger organizations from taking more hands-on approaches to their work schedules by forcing employees to work the schedules they’re assigned.
What a lot of foreign companies and companies that do full remote do is exactly the same as “black companies”: they fake their employees time cards so they can take a day off even when the official work schedule says they were working that day.
Japan needs some reform in their labor measuring practices before 4-day work weeks (a surprisingly popular reform, given Japan’s penchant for conservatism in the workplace) can take hold properly.
Considering it was in Japan they probably got off by just saying it was an experiment and the results would be evaluated (in the trash compactor). Japan is notably risk averse.