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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

#281

Post by TheLML »

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.

I've switched to 90%, working a total of 36 hours, and spreading that to 9 hours per day. Not even much of a difference on work days, as I used to work more Monday through Thursday to have a shorter Friday. So it's basically 30 minutes more, and a day off. And only 10% less pay instead of 20%.

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

#282

Post by wahnfrieden »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #279
wahnfrieden wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And would you work as much unpaid overtime as you would with a salaried 5 day work week job when pressured to by your boss, owner and peers?

I never have been pressured by my boss to do unpaid overtime.

Good for you!

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

#283

Post by cellu »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #130
bombcar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Labour tried in the UK and nobody voted for them lol

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

#284

Post by cellu »

matchbok wrote: post #224
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're just as productive in those 4 days. Same pay for same results. 5 days doesn't make you any more productive.

Then why not 2 days? There is a massive hole in your logic.

Where’s the hold? If we reached a pint where we are as much as productive with only 2 days so be it

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

#285

Post by ipaddr »

nickff wrote: post #164
ipaddr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital costs spent do not go up. An opportunity for saving exist. One extra day means less electrical costs. Admin costs remain static. These costs do not change unless you are hiring someone for that one day. The costs are not going up substantially or at all for most 9/5 businesses

Capital expense is ~= depreciation, which is inversely proportional to the amount of work performed with a given capital asset.

Why would depreciation increase with less usage? Wouldn't the opposite occur? Chairs last longer. Copier would last longer.

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

#287

Post by HowTheStoryEnds »

OJFord wrote: post #217
ben_w wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would that make remote work any more mandatory than it is with 'the cloud' or data centres?

Your worklocation is mir and it's you that goes remote, you don't go remoting. Just like a drill rig. ;)

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

#288

Post by error_logic »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #262
RHSeeger wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believe it or not, many workers don't actually enjoy their work, their company, their boss or their job There are a lot of people that don't enjoy their jobs, but do the work because they're getting paid to do it. You seem to assume that anyone doing their job _only_ because they're being paid to do it will _not_ do their job if they can get away with it (even though they're still being paid to do so). Not everyone…

Eh scamming companies is fine, especially as they get larger. Companies scam employees whenever they get the chance.

Classic tragedy of the commons and hypercompetitive destructive incentives which hurt everyone in the end, sort of like this- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRz54V7rU4U

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

#289

Post by fasa99 »

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.…

Here's the thing.

If you come in with low-mid trust and say "Expectations are 9-5, 5 days a week, in office" that's what you'll get.

If you come in with high-trust and say "four day workweek, flexible hours, remote" you may well get 5-6 days a week most weeks and 7 days a week in crunch times, still with high morale.

People are fearful of the latter approach because if the wrong people are hired, it can absolutely be abused. The flipside is that the former approach will seem stifling to the right people.

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

#290

Post by ghaff »

Sakos wrote: post #258
ghaff wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a lot of the people yearning for 4 day work weeks wouldn't actually want to return to the days when most stores and other institutions were closed on Sundays.

As somebody who lives in Germany where everything is closed on Sundays, uh, it really isn't that bad. It's fine, actually. I'll take 4 day work weeks happily.

As someone who went to school in a state where almost nothing was open on Sunday at the time it was pretty annoying given that I was usually pretty busy (or what passed for it at the time) the other 6 days.

These days I wouldn't really care because I have a lot of flexibility.

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