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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

#151

Post by sandworm101 »

nilamo wrote: post #146
sandworm101 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with a large organization (government, military) that also implemented a hybrid model under covid and decided to keep it going. But not a day goes by that someone doesn't scream for it to end. We have too many people "working from home" all the time and never getting done the stuff that cannot be done from home. Is the server not responding after the recent power outage? Too bad. The guy to turn it back on only c…

Your IT should always be remote. A laptop in the office is not any different from a laptop out of the office. It definitely feels like most people complaining about wfh have no friends and work is their entire life. I honestly do not understand how anyone can pretend they get anything done, while also being constantly interrupted or having conversations about what they're doing this weekend, or such and such sports t…

>> Your IT should always be remote. A laptop in the office is not any different from a laptop out of the office.

Maybe if you are working at Google, with infinite budgets and gleaming-new machines everywhere. But we have old stuff. We have phones that cannot be managed remotely. We have desktop computers that cannot get up and walk between offices unaided. We have fiberoptic wires that break when 60+yo buildings shift on their foundations. We have UPSs that cannot change their own batteries. We have antennas exposed to the wind/rain/snow. We also have innumerable systems that are either too old or too classified to be managed from a laptop at starbucks. None of this stuff can be fixed from home.

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

#152

Post by detourdog »

ghaff wrote: post #149
detourdog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now you're hoteling though which people complain about as well.

What I have heard is that you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people none of the time.

I also think the USA is marching towards making the gig economy the new normal so fractional employment will be come normal.

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

#153

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #49
quaintdev wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really sucks that economic systems built on the ability to exploit surplus labor can persist. Lots of work left to be done. A bug to be patched.

The hard part is convincing the people who see that bug as a feature

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

#154

Post by ghaff »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #133
justsomehnguy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see enough people with way more than 40h/w not being able to save the money.

They just need to read mr money moustache.

While I find a lot of his stuff is a calculated over-the-top schtick, it's also the case that a lot of people overspend on things that are largely luxuries and don't materially improve their quality of life.

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

#155

Post by wahnfrieden »

gchamonlive wrote: post #144
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.…

4day work week won't do magic by itself. The company committing to it must also apply the necessary modifications and seek innovation to tap into this productivity well. It's like in the Industrial revolution when kids (!!) shift were lowered from 18 hours to 12-8 hours. Adults that were assisted by kids also couldn't maintain the same 18 hours shift and for the factories to maintain productivity they had to implemen…

Conditions for factory workers in the US haven't improved because it turned out to be an optimal way to improve productivity. It's because of worker movements demanding it again and again.

Those productivity innovations you mention would've come either way. In other countries with worse working conditions and even less labor power than the US, factory owners reap the benefits of applying such productivity innovations AND the increased output of longer working hours than is generally tolerated by US workers.

From the parent comment:

> but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well.

This is only true in a world where workers are entirely subservient to their masters.

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

#156

Post by ghaff »

detourdog wrote: post #152
ghaff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you're hoteling though which people complain about as well.

What I have heard is that you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people none of the time. I also think the USA is marching towards making the gig economy the new normal so fractional employment will be come normal.

And some people are fine with that. I know freelancers and consultants who work for multiple companies (generally remotely) and they wouldn't have it any other way.

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

#157

Post by tshaddox »

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.…

> 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.

Well, sure, I think that's a given. This is also, for example, why companies pay their employees money in exchange for their labor. The measurable benefit to the company is that very few people would work for free.

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

#158

Post by jedberg »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #127
jedberg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You said you didn’t believe C-suites were ignoring things that could make them more money. I showed you a bunch of cases where C-suites are hurting themselves by ignoring data.

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

#159

Post by ausbah »

sokoloff wrote: post #53
ActionHank wrote: post #6

I can't wait for companies to use this as a way to drive down pay

That seems reasonable. Take two equivalent companies, one that has a 4-day workweek and an otherwise identical one that has a 5-day workweek. Which one would you rather work for? Which one do you think will have a relative abundance of applicants (read: supply of labor)? Which other one do you think will have a lower supply of labor and might need to pay more to attract candidates? It seems logical that a company off…

if productivity is the same why should i be paid less just because # of hours is lower? which isn’t even always the case as these companies will do 9-10 hour days

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

#160

Post by sandworm101 »

belval wrote: post #150
sandworm101 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with a large organization (government, military) that also implemented a hybrid model under covid and decided to keep it going. But not a day goes by that someone doesn't scream for it to end. We have too many people "working from home" all the time and never getting done the stuff that cannot be done from home. Is the server not responding after the recent power outage? Too bad. The guy to turn it back on only c…

That sounds mostly dysfunctional and not really a WFH issue. > Is the server not responding after the recent power outage? Too bad. The guy to turn it back on only comes in Monday-Tuesday. A reasonable company would have some rotating in-office IT or at the very least an oncall that goes to wherever the server is to fix it. > The plumbers and electricians still "work from home" half the week. Pretty much the same thi…

>> A reasonable company would have some rotating in-office IT

Ya. We had that. We had 10+ people doing trouble tickets 8am to 4pm across more than a dozen buildings. They worked hard, but were never actually done. There was always a priority list. Now they work half the week from home. Stuff is piling up and we are begging for more non-at-home IT staff to be hired.

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