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How the three types differ, the Work-Life Balance +4.5 support program, and a checklist to clear before month one
Prompted by the Ministry of Employment and Labor's Work-Life Balance +4.5 project, a growing number of mid-sized and small companies are looking at the 4.5-day workweek. Most of that review centers on whether to adopt it. Is it possible in our industry, do our employees want it, can we absorb the cost? What the companies that actually adopted it run into during month one, though, is a different kind of work. Every Friday, every payroll close, the changed working standards have to be reflected accurately in attendance totals and payroll calculations, and that starts repeating. Deciding to adopt a scheme and being able to operate the scheme you adopted call for separate preparation.
That what holds back the spread of new work schemes is operating capacity rather than awareness of the schemes shows up in the statistics as well. According to "An Analysis of Working-Hour Trends and Flexible Work Arrangement Use at SMEs," published by the Korea SMEs and Startups Institute in 2025, the rate of flexible work arrangement use at SMEs as of 2024 was 11.5%, less than a third of the rate at large companies (36.6%). It is not that they do not know about the schemes. It is a matter of being ready to run the changed working standards accurately every month. The 4.5-day workweek sits on the same structure.
There is one thing to make clear first. There is no single way to run a 4.5-day workweek. The representative types, as organized through Gyeonggi Province's pilot program and elsewhere, are three: working only a half day every Friday, taking every other Friday off entirely, and cutting an hour from each day for a 35-hour week. All three reduce actual working hours, but they differ in how employees experience them and in what attendance and payroll operations have to cover.
| Category | Half-day Fridays every week | Alternating four-day week | 35-hour week |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it runs | 8 hours Monday through Thursday, 4 hours on Friday (36 hours per week) | A five-day week and a four-day week alternating (36 hours per week averaged over two weeks) | 7 hours every day (35 hours per week) |
| How it feels | Friday afternoons open up every week. The most widely known form | One full day off every two weeks | Leaving an hour earlier every day. The largest change on a daily basis |
| What attendance and payroll operations must cover | Standards for judging lateness, early departure, and overtime on a 4-hour day, and how annual leave taken on that day is handled | Tracking whether the current week is a four-day or five-day week, and how work performed on a non-working day is handled | A full reset of lateness, early-departure, and overtime standards, since the baseline for every working day moves from 8 hours to 7 |
Because all three reduce actual working hours, they fit the intent of the Work-Life Balance +4.5 project, which supports companies that shorten actual working hours without cutting wages through labor-management agreement. The specific eligibility requirements and application procedures need to be confirmed through Work24 and your local employment center. One caution is worth noting. In practice, an arrangement that keeps total working hours the same, concentrating them Monday through Thursday and clearing Friday, is also called a 4.5-day workweek. That does not reduce actual working hours, so it differs from the intent of the support program, and because it creates days exceeding eight hours it presupposes a separate design such as a flexible or selective working-hour scheme. It is a different kind of scheme. Either way, choosing the type and revising the rules of employment and employment contracts belong to labor-management agreement and labor-law counsel. What this guide covers is what comes next. Once the type is set and the rules are revised, what begins now?
Once the design is done, judgments and calculations that did not exist before enter attendance and payroll operations on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Here are the main ones.
Under a five-day week, every working day had the same 8-hour baseline. A 4.5-day workweek breaks that premise. With half-day Fridays, you have to newly decide how to treat the excess hours of an employee who works into the afternoon on a 4-hour Friday, and on what basis lateness and early departure are judged on a short day. With an alternating four-day week, week tracking is added on top. Depending on whether the current week is a five-day or four-day week, the same Friday work counts either as regular work or as work on a non-working day. With a 35-hour week, the baseline for every working day moves to 7 hours, so the entire set of lateness, early-departure, and overtime standards built on an 8-hour premise has to be reset. Each one is a matter of simply deciding, but the reality of operations is that this judgment repeats for every employee, every pay cycle.
The question you meet surprisingly early is leave. If someone takes annual leave on a Friday they would work 4 hours, should a full day be deducted, or half? Treating annual leave on an 8-hour day and on a 4-hour day the same invites fairness complaints, and treating them differently means embedding that standard in both the rules and the operation. Under a 35-hour week, how many hours a day of annual leave represents on a 7-hour working day becomes the same kind of question. There is no single correct answer here. It is a matter for the company to set a standard on, and if you launch without one, the questions start with the first leave request.
Because all three types reduce contractual working hours, the basis for payroll calculation also comes up for review. The monthly working hours used to calculate the ordinary hourly wage assume a 40-hour week, so once contractual working hours fall, you have to decide whether and how to adjust that basis, and the basis you decide on has to be applied consistently across all allowance calculations, including overtime, night work, and holiday pay. The specific adjustment method and wage-protection design vary with the company's pay structure and rules of employment, so this is an area that needs labor-law counsel. Applying the agreed standard the same way, without omission, every pay cycle is the part that continues as operations from then on.
A scheme takes effect on a specific date, but payroll closes monthly. In the first month, the old standard's period and the new standard's period coexist inside one pay period. Attendance records and payroll history from before the effective date must be preserved under the existing standard, and only the period from the effective date onward should be tallied and calculated under the new one. If that boundary blurs, the most tedious task of all, retroactive correction, is waiting.
Organized as pre-launch questions, the above comes to the following. If the type is chosen and the rules are revised, the items below are the practical list for operational readiness.
| Area | The question to answer before month one arrives |
|---|---|
| Work-pattern standards | Which type is your 4.5-day workweek, and are working hours by weekday and by week defined identically in the rules and in the operating standards? |
| Attendance judgment standards | Are the standards set for judging lateness, early departure, and overtime on days with shorter hours? (For example, how is afternoon work handled on a 4-hour Friday?) |
| Leave standards | Are the standards set for how annual leave and half-day leave are handled on days with different working hours? |
| Payroll standards | Have you worked out, with labor-law counsel, how to adjust the basis for calculating the ordinary hourly wage after the change in contractual working hours, and is that basis applied consistently across all allowance calculations? |
| Effective-date management | Is attendance and payroll data from before the effective date preserved under the existing standard, with only the period from the effective date onward processed under the new one? |
| Employee communication | Is there a process in place for employees to check their own work pattern and records directly, and to request and approve flexible work? |
You will notice what these questions have in common. None of them is a decision you make once and finish. They are standards that, once set, have to be applied the same way every pay cycle. Whether a scheme is sustainable comes down to whether you have a system that can carry that repetition.
A system will not choose the type for you, revise the rules of employment, or decide the annual leave standard. Those belong to the organization, settled together by labor and management with labor-law counsel. What JaDE, HCG's HR solution for mid-sized and small companies, takes on is the repeated operation of the standards you have set. Register various work patterns such as a 4.5-day workweek or an alternating four-day week by setting differentiated working hours per weekday and per week, and attendance records are tallied by work pattern according to those registered standards, compliance with statutory working hours can be checked, and payroll integration is supported for both monthly-salary and hourly-wage employees as working hours change. A new policy applies without affecting existing attendance and payroll data, so the two standards before and after the effective date stay separated inside the system, and employees can request and approve flexible work from mobile and look up their own records directly. If you are considering a 4.5-day workweek, you can start by talking with the JaDE team about the order in which to run scheme design and operational preparation.