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Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

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21–30 of 311 posts

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#21

This is what Keynes predicted might happen - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439#... That article notes most people can't make enough money from 15 hours of work to save up for retirement. I also wonder if "leisure" has to be redefined, since work and life blend so much online. What does 15 hours of work really mean in a knowledge work job?

For me and I think in the past leisure did not mean mindlesly doing something like nothing, it meant time after misery is gone. I see it as working necessary time at work that you likely do not want to do, like at a factory assembly line or farm, hospital, etc. After that, you can stay at work, but do something else, like engineering at that factory or what else there is you would like to do. This mean less working hours, more people could get a job, it is something like work sharing. It would allow older people to work too, since work day will be lower, it is not like old people can't work at all, they can't work as intensivelly. In the end, those who do not work at the moment, still connsume, they just do not produce what they consume. With smaller work day, they will be able to produce. By work here I mean work and firms that produce things related to "misery gone", not all there is. So if someone would like to work himself 16 h/day, ok, but not in those firms.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#23

This is what Keynes predicted might happen - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439#... That article notes most people can't make enough money from 15 hours of work to save up for retirement. I also wonder if "leisure" has to be redefined, since work and life blend so much online. What does 15 hours of work really mean in a knowledge work job?

And many cannot save enough money for retirement on 40 hour a week either.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#24
post #11

I have some gripes with this group and their publications: - They don't randomize pilots, so any effect you see is likely to be confounded - In this publication, it appears there was ~50% attrition between the initial pilot and the follow-up study — again, a huge source of potential confounding - As another example, in another publication, they showed a plot of GDP per capita against average working hours, and insinu…

How would you randomize 4 day work weeks in an unbiased way?

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#25
post #24
post #11

I have some gripes with this group and their publications: - They don't randomize pilots, so any effect you see is likely to be confounded - In this publication, it appears there was ~50% attrition between the initial pilot and the follow-up study — again, a huge source of potential confounding - As another example, in another publication, they showed a plot of GDP per capita against average working hours, and insinu…

How would you randomize 4 day work weeks in an unbiased way?

You can't, which makes it difficult or maybe impossible to have hard facts about it

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great callout for unionizing. Because corporations would extract as much from workers as they could without boundaries. Labor law modifications will help as well, but that takes longer as you wait for old political and business leaders to age out (and take their work ideas with them).

Unionizing is not enough. 4/day workweek needs to be universally standardized across the OECD/world for it to stick, because whether we like it or not, countries and economies are in competition with each other. And if one factory can churn out X steel widgets and another one only X -20% because they work only 4 days per week, then all the jobs and industry will move to the former as the latter will not be competitiv…

We went from "six days thou shalt labour" to the 5-day week for a number of reasons. Unions were one reason, Henry Ford was another [1][2]. His original argument was that if we give workers an extra day of leisure time, there'll be more demand for leisure products to consume - like, you know, Model T cars. Then, Ford noticed that his new 5-day workers were so much more productive per hour than before, that it more than made up the difference for the extra hours not worked.

So I'd have two criticisms of your "X-20%" figure. The first is that just because individual workers are only in 4 days a week, doesn't have to mean the factory only operates 4 days a week; indeed a lot of steel factories do some kind of shift work anyway because firing up a furnace from cold is hugely inefficient. Sure, that means more heads total and so more HR expenses than if everyone worked 5 days, but I don't think it adds up to the 20% you quoted.

Secondly, as in Ford's case, the extra productivity you get this way might be enough to more than offset the losses, and even increase your profits.

[1] https://www.morningbrew.com/sidekick/stories/history-five-da... [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/american-... (But note, the claim that moving to a 5-day week was a pay cut needs some context. The 5-day week started in 1926. But in 1914, Ford already doubled his workers' wages from $2.50/day (which was already not bad by the standards of the time) to $5/day, almost unheard of at the time - though initially with strings attached [3] which were later removed. So working 5 days a week at Ford's factory could well have still brought in more net pay a week than 6 days a week at a competitor in 1926. [3] https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/henry-ford-implements-5...

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#28
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a 4-day work week isn't to cram the 5th day into 4 days, it's completely removing the 5th day, thus working 8 hours every day for 4 days, as opposed to 10 hours for 5 days.

Question: If they removed the 5th work day and the same amount of work got done, then management can say that basically the employees were slacking off for a day a week. And if so, what's stopping them next to increase it back to 5 and chase 5 days worth of productivity out of 5 days/week instead of the previous 4 using the same efficiency gains as performance benchmarks of the 4 days/week?

I suppose the same forces that usually prevent a move from a 5 day week up to a 6 day week: it's unpopular and counterproductive. But I wouldn't be opposed to a 4 day week being privileged in law somehow.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#29
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a 4-day work week isn't to cram the 5th day into 4 days, it's completely removing the 5th day, thus working 8 hours every day for 4 days, as opposed to 10 hours for 5 days.

Question: If they removed the 5th work day and the same amount of work got done, then management can say that basically the employees were slacking off for a day a week. And if so, what's stopping them next to increase it back to 5 and chase 5 days worth of productivity out of 5 days/week instead of the previous 4 using the same efficiency gains as performance benchmarks of the 4 days/week?

For knowledge workers, being 100% productive for 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a lie.

I don't think anyone can truly deep focus 8 hours a day without burning out at some point.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great callout for unionizing. Because corporations would extract as much from workers as they could without boundaries. Labor law modifications will help as well, but that takes longer as you wait for old political and business leaders to age out (and take their work ideas with them).

Unionizing is not enough. 4/day workweek needs to be universally standardized across the OECD/world for it to stick, because whether we like it or not, countries and economies are in competition with each other. And if one factory can churn out X steel widgets and another one only X -20% because they work only 4 days per week, then all the jobs and industry will move to the former as the latter will not be competitiv…

>> And if one factory can churn out X steel widgets and another X -20% because they work only 4 days per week

The number of widgets produced and the price asked for them is not a function of workdays.

You’d need to control for quality of widget produced - and since buyers are human that may mean perceived quality rather than some absolute assessment of quality.

You’d need to control for location & distance to market/customer for each widget produced.

You’d need to control for efficiency of production process.

You’d need to control for… you get the point. The only possible way your idea could stand would be if all else was held equal - and that’s simply not possible outside of horse shit models.

Models can be useful, but not like this. This is a BS way to think about an economic model.

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