71–80 of 108 posts
I wonder how much people are adjusting their behavior for these trials... if and when it becomes the norm, do the long meetings and less productive practices creep back in?
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Just as bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy, so does management. There is a good way to do big management, but what usually happens is managers find themselves with time to spare and invent activities which do not directly add value, but eventually snowball into formidable tasks requiring more management.
That's true for government because they have no competition. In the corporate world, excessive bloat leads to stifled innovation and eventual irrelevance then bankruptcy. Sears could have been Amazon.
Although I'm in Australia, I work for a UK-based edtech company (Wonde) that operates a four-day workweek -- having joined just over three months ago. I know that I can only contribute anecdata, but from my perspective I've not seen any reduction in output. Indeed, I've seen fewer meetings, and meetings defaulting to thirty minutes, rather than sixty. I've also seen more async communication -- not once have I receive…
> I love that I [..] can (shock!) go out to lunch with my wife during the week while the kids are at school (Genuine question) but why wouldn't someone be able to have lunch with their OH while working a traditional 5-day week? Surely a lunch break is something everyone is entitled to even when they're working that day?
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> I love that I [..] can (shock!) go out to lunch with my wife during the week while the kids are at school (Genuine question) but why wouldn't someone be able to have lunch with their OH while working a traditional 5-day week? Surely a lunch break is something everyone is entitled to even when they're working that day?
honest answer: both my partner and I work, but she works four days per week to balance childcare. If I worked four days then we would have a whole day together to enjoy hanging out with our son. My commute to the office is over an hour (London, England) from my home, so returning home for lunch is not an option.
The 4-day work week is fairly normalized here to try and balance careers for both parents with raising children, so these articles seem really weird to me. The tradeoff is you get paid for 32 hours instead of 40, and any other benefits (holidays, bonuses, expenses, etc) are adjusted according to how much of a percentage of full-time (40 hours/week) you work.
There are at least 3 radically different concepts of a 4 day work week: - same hours, same pay - reduced hours, same pay - reduced hours, reduced pay Why is it always so hard to find this information when people discuss 4 day work weeks? The constant vagueness here is extremely toxic to the diaglogue. People talk past eachother.
There are at least 3 radically different concepts of a 4 day work week: - same hours, same pay - reduced hours, same pay - reduced hours, reduced pay Why is it always so hard to find this information when people discuss 4 day work weeks? The constant vagueness here is extremely toxic to the diaglogue. People talk past eachother.
If it's anything other than 100/80/100, it's flexible work rather than a four-day working week.
There are at least 3 radically different concepts of a 4 day work week: - same hours, same pay - reduced hours, same pay - reduced hours, reduced pay Why is it always so hard to find this information when people discuss 4 day work weeks? The constant vagueness here is extremely toxic to the diaglogue. People talk past eachother.
I don't think I agree that it's hard to find at all. In almost all coverage I've seen of this in the UK it has been made extremely clear either in the headline or the opening paragraph that it's "reduced hours, same pay".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63808326 opens with "When Joe Dance was offered the chance to earn his full salary by working just four days a week, he was sceptical."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61570021 is headlined "The workers getting 100% of the pay for 80% of the hours"
The pilot scheme's own website https://www.4dayweek.co.uk/pilot-programme says "with almost every company that took part deciding to continue with a four-day week, with no loss of pay for workers."
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Lacking the grindset there - my consulting startup offers a 75% increase in productivity, via a 7 day a week schedule at the daily output shown in this trial. You can trebble that if you dont let the employees sleep or eat as well, for details you would have to sign up for the platinum package.
Is a package available where employees are taught that "unions" are where you formally marry the company?
I'm still not really seeing how the 4-day-week, at 5 days pay, is delivering the (almost magical) 20%+ productivity boost that its proponents seem to claim it does. I'm sure almost all people feel better when given the option to work fewer hours for the same money ... I know I would! How does that translate into increased productivity, though?
Since ancient times we have known that there is a tradeoff between days of work and days of rest, which is where the idea of "rest days" came from in the first place. Societies with rest days managed to outcompete societies without rest days, despite the former seeming to produce less on paper. Regardless of whether the optimal ratio is 2:5 or 3:4 or whatever, the general mechanism is not in doubt.
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It mentions a fish and chip shop and an education facility. I’d guess that the bulk of fish and chips are sold outside 9-5 Monday to Friday, and that there would be rioting in the streets if school days were reduced 20%.
> there would be rioting in the streets if school days were reduced 20% Why not move schools to a four-day week, too? If it works for adults at work, I'm sure children would see similar benefits. We already know that typical school hours deprive children of much needed rest.
Do you have kids? I love mine completely and unconditionally, but a day off being an employee and a parent (well half the day at least) sounds like bliss!