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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

#81

Post by FirmwareBurner »

jedberg wrote: post #66
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this. I think my manager would also like to work just 32 hours/week instead of 40 for the same pay. So weh do we stop blaming them?

I'm sure your manager does. They aren't the ones demanding 40 hours and return to office. It's the C-suite that is doing it. The C-Suite got where they are because they are extroverts who excel at in person interactions. They can't use that skill unless you're there in front of them. They also came up in a world where everyone worked in an office 40 hours a week. And since they are in charge, they get to choose the r…

>and are seemingly choosing to ignore productivity studies that show their decisions don't make sense.

I also don't buy this. Companies are all profit oriented and don't like leaving money on the table if research shows there is left over money on the table.

They can't monetize control but they can monetize money. If research would show they would make more profits using AWS instead of Azure(example pulled out of my ass for simplicity), they would immediately switch to it.

So if research would be universal and clear cut that working 32 hours outcompetes those companies working 40 hours, then at least a significant proportion of companies would be using this new way of work as leverage to outcompete their competitors working 40 and beat them at profits and market share, and then that would become the new norm as it's the proven winning strategy, since that's how competition in capitalism works.

But so far that's not been the case.

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

#82

Post by whatwhaaaaat »

quaintdev wrote: post #38
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.

Sounds like the US should introduce similar legislation to what India did with the on soil stuff.

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

#83

Post by CraigJPerry »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #33
CraigJPerry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 prod…

>> have already optimized for all these factors

Factories and companies start and die all the time. The idea that some steady state equilibrium exists is only in these BS models.

>> production loss and therefore a loss on economic competitiveness

Apple is less competitive because it makes less iPhones than Samsung?

>> What's the better way?

Stop pretending models predict reality perfectly.

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

#84

Post by FirmwareBurner »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #83
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 prod…

>> have already optimized for all these factors Factories and companies start and die all the time. The idea that some steady state equilibrium exists is only in these BS models. >> production loss and therefore a loss on economic competitiveness Apple is less competitive because it makes less iPhones than Samsung? >> What's the better way? Stop pretending models predict reality perfectly.

>Stop pretending models predict reality perfectly.

But what it reality to you and how do you describe it if not by models?

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

#85

Post by detourdog »

jjcm wrote: post #71

There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it.…

Also large organizations could have smaller facilities by using staggered schedules.

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

#86

Post by bombcar »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #55
ssklash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't the goal be to work as little as possible? Infinite growth in a finite world just makes us all work harder than necessary, and instead of using productivity and efficiency gains to benefit people/workers, they just go to pad some company's stock price.

>Shouldn't the goal be to work as little as possible? It's my goal indeed, but not the goal of my country, the economy and the businesses in it who provide the jobs I work for and also lobby for the labor laws my EU country has. Of course doing no work at all while getting paid loads would be the dream, but I wasn't talking about dreams, I was talking about reality. And the reality is way different than what you drea…

Too bad the "government goal of X% employment (whatever that is)" couldn't be met by tuning the workweek up and down instead of futzing with interest percentages.

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

#87

Post by kevinventullo »

jjcm wrote: post #71

There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it.…

domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it

I’m not so sure. On the one hand, it seems nearly tautological. Yet, so much of the comp structure and general attitude towards employees in big tech seems to incentivize job hopping every few years. I would prefer not having to do that, but my hand is forced.

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

#88

Post by Arrath »

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…

Yeah some of the best times of my life have been on 4-day work weeks. Added bonus, they were 10 hours days so we not only got our 40 hours a week but a chunk of that was OT!

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

#90

Post by lzmibes »

malux85 wrote: post #72
lzmibes wrote: post #67

Employer and employee should be free to negotiate whatever arrangement is mutually agreeable. I don't think there needs to be any more to it than that

Except most employers just do what everyone else does - and one might say “the market forces them to” but that’s total nonsense. Look at remote work, it was fairly uncommon in programming and very uncommon outside of programming. Then everyone was forced to do it with Covid and now it’s much more common because it works. Everyone was free to negotiate at any time before and after Covid, but anything that was even mil…

Did remote, partially remote, 3, 4 and 5 day weeks before COVID. It was always there. Did you ask? Do you need a union to ask for you?
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