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List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

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Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#41

Post by Yeul »

varispeed wrote: post #27
djtango wrote: post #24

Personally, I think some of the reality is that in a dual income household if both individuals work full time there's limited time to do life admin and some life admin can only be done during business hours. So in aggregate, many companies aren't getting 5 full days of work from their employees. Sure when you're in your twenties it's easy to give 6.5 days a week. But when you're two working parents with no help? Good…

It always amazes me that, for example, shops are open when everyone is at work. In my town, the shopping high street closes at 5pm. So when I finished work, I'd be back in my town at 6pm, where everything is dead. The only way to do any shopping is to drive to a supermarket that’s open until 10pm or shop online. It's like everything is catered to people who don't work.

As they say in the Netherlands: Sunday is my fun day.

Something astonishing happened in 1994: the first time a government coalition was installed that excluded any Christian party. Capitalism prevailed.

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#42

Post by kranke155 »

rsavage wrote: post #33

I am co-founder of a 5 year old tech startup with 50 staff that introduced a 4dww / 32hr work week a little over 2 years ago. Since are a lot of questions surrounding 4dww - Thought I might be able to offer some insights. 1. “four days but actually working longer” or “four days with reduced hours”. -- We offer 32hrs work week, rather than the standard 40hrs in our home country. This is generally taken as 4 days, but…

Retaining those 2-10x engineers because they can’t even imagine leaving your company gives you far higher productivity gains than 1 extra work day a week.

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#43

Post by eastbound »

herghost wrote: post #20

Speaking as a worker this seems like a positive move. Stepping outside that though - how is this going to impact the wider economy? The UK is in a tough spot. Partially self-inflicted, partially political, partially just the way things are now. Will this improve things? Will it help or hinder?

> how is this going to impact the wider economy? The UK is in a tough spot. Partially self-inflicted

Well, take example from France, if you ever do. In 1936, the glorious Leon Blum signed the first national paid leave of the world (Congés Payés). We have literal photos of us going to the beach by train in 1936.

Meanwhile the Germans were working in factories for countless hours building bombs. Congés Payés cost us an alarming defeat. What a chance we were at the beach before those hard times.

(I confirm this comment is a tribute to all the English and US youths who had to save us from our sins).

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#44

Post by wslh »

Since 2003, my companies have always been structured to support a 5-day, 30-hour workweek, and most employees follow this model. I was fortunate to implement this approach long before it became a widely discussed topic. The reasoning was straightforward: many employees were also studying, and the complexity, and intense focus of our work, such as reverse engineering, made adding two extra artificial hours unnecessary. However, shifting to a four-day workweek would be challenging in our context due to synchronization issues.

That said, some employees do work full-time, particularly those in operations and other roles that require broader availability to communicate with external parties. There are also situations where someone needs to stay longer to complete a critical task, these exceptions are inevitable, but having clear guidelines helps ensure they remain just that: exceptions.

A related challenge, as highlighted by @rsavage, is the use of social media during work hours, especially in a remote setting. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully control, but what matters is cultivating a company culture that balances flexibility with accountability. The key is staying aware and making adjustments before things get out of hand.

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#45

Post by Arch-TK »

scarab92 wrote: post #36
waihtis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee, are you saying wages are somehow tied to output? Why didn't anyone think of this before suggesting a 4 day workweek?

Proponents pretend like 4 day work weeks don’t reduce output with all sorts of dubious motivated reasoning. A lot of it is “we can be more efficient” and therefore we don’t need to work as many hours, overlooking the obvious fact that if everyone can be 20% more efficient then logical thing to do is downside headcount by 20%, not keep 100% of the workforce at 80% of capacity.

It takes so long for a woman to go through the gestation period before giving birth. But when you get 9 women you can get 9 babies in the same period. But it still takes 9 months. I think the women just aren't working at full capacity for those 9 months. It should be possible to just get the 9 women to produce 1 baby in 1/9th of the period.

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#46

Post by matwood »

varispeed wrote: post #27
djtango wrote: post #24

Personally, I think some of the reality is that in a dual income household if both individuals work full time there's limited time to do life admin and some life admin can only be done during business hours. So in aggregate, many companies aren't getting 5 full days of work from their employees. Sure when you're in your twenties it's easy to give 6.5 days a week. But when you're two working parents with no help? Good…

It always amazes me that, for example, shops are open when everyone is at work. In my town, the shopping high street closes at 5pm. So when I finished work, I'd be back in my town at 6pm, where everything is dead. The only way to do any shopping is to drive to a supermarket that’s open until 10pm or shop online. It's like everything is catered to people who don't work.

One of the complaints I hear about Italy is the shops aren't open all day in smaller towns. But, they are open in the morning and in the evening. Exactly the time you want them to be open. Until you internalize this clock it can sometimes be annoying, but makes a lot of sense.

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#47

Post by tsimionescu »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #31
lukan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What employers want to know is not what happens in poorly managed offices, but what happens in well managed offices where employee workload was already optimised." What I want to know is, whether we can manage a society, where one part is not always overworked and the other part bored to death. But rather a healthy balance. 4 days workweek might help as a step in that direction, but I agree that there is way too muc…

International competition is the interesting thing for me, if we can prove a 4 day week in any form would be similarly efficient, that could give a great incentive to hiring the top talent and convincing them to migrate to the nation's that standardized it. If it turns out that it's less efficient in the long run, then it would cause the whole nation to fall behind, reducing total comp possible, and leading to the mo…

Alternatively, international worker solidarity should be the model we work for, as we did with the current 5-day work week. It was neither productivity studies nor economic competitiveness that solidified the 5-day work week, it was workers demanding it under threat of violence and agreeing (or being coerced) not to break strikes even internationally.

Throughout human history, this has always been the only model that has ever brought social progress. Voting for more enlightened leaders sounds nice, but the reality is that massive pressure from working people (in the form of actual strikes and violence) has been the only thing that has actually worked. Not to say that it has always worked: even when the riot is not successfully suppressed , it can be co-opted into bringing in even worse regimes and problems (see Russia, China).

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#48

Post by tsimionescu »

scarab92 wrote: post #17
MortyWaves wrote: post #11

I’m starting to believe the obfuscation and lack of information regarding “four days but actually working longer” or “four days with reduced hours” models is deliberate.

The “studies” surrounding this topic are laughably bad. The authors almost always have conflicts of interest. The studies are often funded and/or staffed by proponents of the 4 day work week. The outcomes are mostly subjective and self reported, which is problematic because employees clearly have a vested interest in claiming they are more productive than they really might be. They’re also short term, and dont addres…

These studies are entirely irrelevant. No one will ever convince any corporation or private owner that they can get more work out of people working less, even if it were true (which I personally highly doubt).

And that is also entirely irrelevant. The relevant question is whether our society can maintain similar levels of good fortune if we all worked less. And the historical evidence is clear: there are many times more workers today, using tools that are monumentally more advanced, than in the 1930s or even 1950s. And yet, we are all required to work just as much as we used to 100+ years ago, while being paid less in real terms.

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#49

Post by amelius »

Yeul wrote: post #38

36 hours is the standard in my country- it's called progress. A century ago it was probably 80 hours for everyone over 12 lol.

However, the free market dictates that you will be outcompeted by anyone who is willing to work 40+ hours. So much for progress.

Re: List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week

#50

Post by crimsoneer »

scarab92 wrote: post #36
waihtis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee, are you saying wages are somehow tied to output? Why didn't anyone think of this before suggesting a 4 day workweek?

Proponents pretend like 4 day work weeks don’t reduce output with all sorts of dubious motivated reasoning. A lot of it is “we can be more efficient” and therefore we don’t need to work as many hours, overlooking the obvious fact that if everyone can be 20% more efficient then logical thing to do is downside headcount by 20%, not keep 100% of the workforce at 80% of capacity.

... Except the obvious argument for a 4 day week is that in a knowledge economy, downtime is more critical to meaningful work. People like Tolkien don't just write 9-5, there's no reason consultants or programmers should work that way, it just doesn't scale.
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