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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

#121

Post by FirmwareBurner »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #115
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stop pretending models predict reality perfectly. But what it reality to you and how do you describe it if not by models?

>> But what it reality to you Complicated. It’s rare for any interesting scenario not to be complicated. >> how do you describe it By aiming for honesty and accuracy but with enough humility to realise these absolutes are unachievable in most interesting cases. To make it more concrete in this particular case It means being careful to state assumptions is essential.

But you haven't described anything, you just said it's complicated.

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

#122

Post by barbazoo »

Arrath wrote: post #88
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!

Usually the point is to reduce the total hours per week as well, i.e. 32h instead of 40h.

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

#123

Post by FirmwareBurner »

hananova wrote: post #109
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Many of us only work 5 days a week officially , there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week. Others will just slow down a little to fill the five days. Yet others will use WFH as an opportunity to do a 4 day work week.

> there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week

Many? I doubt it. Maybe many very privileged tech/big-corp workers in developed rich western countries, but globally that's not that many.

Your argument is exactly the argument companies use to justify not going 4 days a week. If workers already have it so good that they have free time to slack off one day out of 5 days per week what's to say they also won't slack off for a day at 4 days per week once that becomes the norm?

Don't get me wrong I'd be al for it, but your comment proves many already have it so much better even at 5 days/week.

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

#124

Post by risyachka »

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.…

The work week went from 6 days to 5 and economy growth didn’t stall (when people were waaay less productive)

My bet is literally nothing will change if we go to 4-day work week.

Can’t say about others but my productivity goes way up with an extra weekend. I am way more rested and eager to do some work in Monday.

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

#125

Post by toomuchtodo »

jedberg wrote: post #118
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Return-to-office mandates aren't making companies more valuable and productive, study finds: https://www.businessinsider.com/return-to-office-mandates-re... "Any one of the three economic factors described above (real estate, retention and recruitment), by itself, could justify the alleged loss in productivity. When you consider all three, it is extremely hard to imagine any organization for which the losses resultin…

Highly factualized comment. I believe the mental model in question is not yet flexible enough to update based on the data, and there is an expectation of logic from fancy emotional monkeys ("executive leadership") grounded in status, control, and work as identity.

> 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.

If only it were that simple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/15/alibabas-jack-ma-working-ove...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/175400/workers-sense-identity-j...

https://www.fastcompany.com/90955495/happiness-work-survey-u...

https://www.careerchange.com/newsletters/working-standards-u...

https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours

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

#126

Post by Arrath »

barbazoo wrote: post #122
Arrath wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Usually the point is to reduce the total hours per week as well, i.e. 32h instead of 40h.

Oh yeah I totally get it, but we were hourly rather than salary so it was the best of both worlds. We were working out of town so what's a couple extra hours a day on the site getting paid when your alternative is primarily the hotel room. For us the killer benefit was driving home Thursday night (avoiding all that extra Friday traffic) for a full extra day home with our families

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

#127

Post by FirmwareBurner »

jedberg wrote: post #118
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Return-to-office mandates aren't making companies more valuable and productive, study finds: https://www.businessinsider.com/return-to-office-mandates-re... "Any one of the three economic factors described above (real estate, retention and recruitment), by itself, could justify the alleged loss in productivity. When you consider all three, it is extremely hard to imagine any organization for which the losses resultin…

I'm talking about 32 vs 40 h per week productivity, not WFH productivity. What's one have to do with the other?

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

#129

Post by FirmwareBurner »

bombcar wrote: post #107
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Through the exact science you say you "don't buy" because you seem to believe companies operating in a flawed market are better at finding ground truth than literal science. I'm saying companies believe in science that leads to profit, as the market can stay irrational longer than companies can stay solvent. Same how science showed switching to EUV lithography is better than sticking to DUV and then all companies ad…

Companies (currently) compete by offering more money - if the pool of applicants dried up enough, perhaps they'd begin competing by offering more time . The problem is if they pay you $x per year, they don't care how many hours you work, as long as the job gets done. So something that makes their life a bit more annoying (no replies on Friday) but makes your life amazingly better won't get done.

>Companies (currently) compete by offering more money - if the pool of applicants dried up enough, perhaps they'd begin competing by offering more time.

Because more money is what most candidates prioritize when job hopping, because when buying a house they can pay it with that money but can't pay it with more time off.

The only people who prioritize less hours for less money are those who are already fortunate enough to have enough money but those can always choose to work less hours for proportionately less pay.

Like it or not, there are so many people in this rat race trying to build wealth that 40h and more money is preferable to 32h and less money. That's why the 40h sticks and the negotiation is done on money.

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

#130

Post by FirmwareBurner »

bombcar wrote: post #86
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

So why haven't they done it? Seems like a good way to get votes. "If you vote for me you'll only work 4 days/week."
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