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

#31

Post by perfunctory »

I personally first tried 4-day workweek about 10 years ago and still love it. That was one of the best decisions I made in my life.

Especially in software industry, it's not that hard to arrange I believe. Even easier if we do it collectively. And when more and more people do it and it becomes a norm, the income will just readjust and return to the current levels.

But even today, when it's still not a norm, and I have a reduced income compared to my fulltime working peers, I still consider it a bargain. Extra free day is totally worth it. I am basically paying for some extra happiness.

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

#32

Post by FirmwareBurner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't less workers also mean less consumers therefore less demands for goods and sdervices? People keep saying how the declining demographics will mean the workers have more leverage but when will that come? As currently I'm struggling to find a job and a recruiter who rejected me just told me they have huge supply of "strong candidates" and they don't need to compromise anymore on offering WFH or accepting only Engl…

> Won't less workers also mean less consumers therefore less demands for goods and sdervices? Longer convo for another thread, but TLDR yes, "structural decline." Trajectory is a function of how fast folks age out of the working population (retire or death), because cohorts coming up behind them keep shrinking. EDIT: Put some contact info in your profile.

>EDIT: Put some contact info in your profile.

For what?

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

#33

Post by FirmwareBurner »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #30
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

>You’d need to control for… you get the point.

Exactly. And most companies and factories in the west have already optimized for all these factors to get maximum output on a 5 day work week. Moving to a 4 day workweek would be an automatic production loss and therefore a loss on economic competitiveness compared top those still on 5.

What you're talking about, companies who can lower working hours without loosing productivity and competitiveness are very few and far between, usually world champions who have a captive market to themselves like Nvidia, ASML, Airbus, high end service jobs, etc, but that's only a microscopic share of the total amount of players on the market. The rest are firing on all cylinders trying to overtake or catch up to those established market players, and if you ever worked at a startup, it usually means longer hours, not fewer.

>This is a BS way to think about an economic model.

What's the better way? If all companies could get the same levels of productivity form 4 days a weeks from 5 why haven't they done that already?

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

#34

Post by FirmwareBurner »

bongodongobob wrote: post #29
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Of course, but if this is a known fact, why are we still working 5 days a week as the norm and not 4?

Clearly inertia is more important to companies and legislators than facts.

Or that probably not all jobs are so leisurely and inefficient, that 5 days of actual productivity can be don in less.

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

#35

Post by bombcar »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #14
toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

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…

It would be decently hard to find an argument against the 4 day workweek that would not ALSO apply to the 5 day workweek (compared to 6) - perhaps the only real one is "it's what everyone does".

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

#36

Post by black_puppydog »

FredPret wrote: post #25
nxpnsv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

seems like a bad excuse to not even try to go beyond shrugging/handwaving

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

#37

Post by brightball »

Counterpoint: When hiring people reasonably early out of school, they often just want the additional hours. I know of a business in my area that tried the 4 day work week and they ended up having to open on Fridays for half a day because people just wanted more hours (and money). Without it, the same people were just getting second jobs.

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

#38

Post by quaintdev »

perfunctory wrote: post #31

I personally first tried 4-day workweek about 10 years ago and still love it. That was one of the best decisions I made in my life. Especially in software industry, it's not that hard to arrange I believe. Even easier if we do it collectively. And when more and more people do it and it becomes a norm, the income will just readjust and return to the current levels. But even today, when it's still not a norm, and I hav…

This is something that will never happen in India because no matter how bad you want 4 day work week theres always someone who will do full 5 days a week and do additional work over the weekend.

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

#39

Post by FirmwareBurner »

bombcar wrote: post #35
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It would be decently hard to find an argument against the 4 day workweek that would not ALSO apply to the 5 day workweek (compared to 6) - perhaps the only real one is "it's what everyone does".

But then why work 4 day/week and not 3, when 4 days/week becomes the new normal that burns people out? And then why not work 2 days instead of 3? And so on.

How do we decide which model is the sustainable one?

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

#40

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

brightball wrote: post #37

Counterpoint: When hiring people reasonably early out of school, they often just want the additional hours. I know of a business in my area that tried the 4 day work week and they ended up having to open on Fridays for half a day because people just wanted more hours (and money). Without it, the same people were just getting second jobs.

This isn't for people how are hourly, it's for salaried employees.
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