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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

#191

Post by sokoloff »

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.

That’s a particularly strange demand to make as someone who doesn’t expose your own contact info.

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

#192

Post by wahnfrieden »

gchamonlive wrote: post #174
wahnfrieden wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh sure, don't get me wrong. I am not a techno-positivist that believes innovations will save us from evil. That was only to illustrate how a change in working policy has to go alongside technical and cultural adaptations. These worker movements are crucial to keep workers from getting both pressured to produce more AND work longer hours.

Got it.

The parent’s line about a company needing to maintain or increase productivity in order to make an improvement to working conditions is one that only those truly part of ownership should be making. Especially when it’s never said so in both directions: if productivity improved (through automation or otherwise) then the workers shouldn’t have to work as long hours. Only actual owners get to work less if they wish to in wage labor business. And it is their privilege to demand workers increase or maintain productivity if they wish to work fewer hours.

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

#193

Post by toomuchtodo »

sokoloff wrote: post #191
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That’s a particularly strange demand to make as someone who doesn’t expose your own contact info.

> I'm struggling to find a job

I’m connected with over 2k recruiters and was low key trying to help.

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

#194

Post by ben_w »

vidarh wrote: post #137
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…

My employer's IT is in a different country. I'm not sure which. If it matters, that's an organizational problem, not a WFH problem.

At the rate things are currently changing, I won't be very surprised if non-trivial server capacity gets located in orbit thanks to some successor to Starlink.

This will make remote work mandatory, even if it still can't fix all the possible issues.

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

#195

Post by bojan »

bb123 wrote: post #73
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.…

I’d happily take a 20% pay cut for a 4 day work week, if it was offered.

This is very common in the Netherlands.

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

#196

Post by ben_w »

bb123 wrote: post #73
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.…

I’d happily take a 20% pay cut for a 4 day work week, if it was offered.

I'm told it's a legal requirement for companies to provide that on request here in Germany, though I've never actually tried that yet, don't know any caveats.

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

#198

Post by lolinder »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #188
lolinder wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point—your organization is completely dysfunctional at this point and hiring won't change that. Based on your description you don't have a WFH policy, you have a policy that incentivizes not working at all. What makes you think that these hypothetical new hires are going to actually work while the rest of their department doesn't? What sane person would put up with that treatment?

>I think you missed the point—your organization is completely dysfunctional at this point Would you be surprised to hear that most companies in the world are just like that? HN readers are in a bubble where they can afford to be picky on where they work choosing companies that fit in their belief system in terms of organizational efficiency and work culture, instead of just choosing the least horrible job they can fi…

I said nothing about the ratio of dysfunctional organizations to non-dysfunctional, nor did I encourage OP to switch jobs or even try to change something in the org. All I said is that their organization is dysfunctional and hiring new people into the dysfunctional teams will do absolutely nothing to fix that.

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

#199

Post by iknowstuff »

pitahat wrote: post #184

I think the biggest thing we often miss when we talk about the 4-day work week is that most employees would not mind doing condensed hours i.e. longer hours everyday but then work fewer days. It doesn't have to be straight cut to 32 hours etc

Data on “most”?

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

#200

Post by FirmwareBurner »

lolinder wrote: post #198
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think you missed the point—your organization is completely dysfunctional at this point Would you be surprised to hear that most companies in the world are just like that? HN readers are in a bubble where they can afford to be picky on where they work choosing companies that fit in their belief system in terms of organizational efficiency and work culture, instead of just choosing the least horrible job they can fi…

I said nothing about the ratio of dysfunctional organizations to non-dysfunctional, nor did I encourage OP to switch jobs or even try to change something in the org. All I said is that their organization is dysfunctional and hiring new people into the dysfunctional teams will do absolutely nothing to fix that.

>that doesn't make it not dysfunctional

I never said that's not dysfunctional, I said most companies ARE dysfunctional in one way or another, and it's something most workers who've been around the block a few times learn to live with eventually, since they prioritize hobbies, family and having a roof over their heads instand of finding that ideal Goldlacks company that's never dysfunctional in any way, because that doesn't really exist.

Especially traditional companies tend to be insanely dysfunctional when it comes to IT and SW engineering in general. And most people know this but still plenty choose to work there and put up with that dysfunctionality instead of fighting to change it, because like I said, it's just a job that pays the bills, not a personal identity, and a lot of the people in the real world aren't as fussy about this as HN is.

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