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

Post by ojhughes » Sat, Feb 01, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #28

yurishimo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I don’t see how it helps in their current political climate. Inflation and energy costs are a huge problem in the UK right now and that would lead to the assumption that people need to earn more. Going to a 4 day work week seems counter to the idea of earning more. Perhaps at the very high end (corporate management, etc) where companies can afford keep salaries the same without expecting more output, but…

There is also aspect of having 1 extra day and no money to do anything meaningful with it. UK wages are already poor and cost of living is insane. Are you going to spend that day in your sorry mould ridden flat with other housemates also skint with nothing else to do? Where do you even go? Shops are dead, public transport is unaffordable and state of it resembles soviet union near its collapse, entertainment, attract…

Post by jokethrowaway » Sat, Feb 01, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #60

nemomarx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you be twice as productive working 80 hours a week as you are at 40? surely there's diminishing returns, and it doesn't seem obvious that 40 is the sweet spot.

You can barely even have a single income household anymore these days, thanks to the free market. If progress exists, it's going in the wrong direction.

Post by scarab92 » Sat, Feb 01, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

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…

Post by crimsoneer » Sat, Feb 01, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

scarab92 wrote: post #57

crimsoneer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

Knowledge work does require time where you are mulling over the problem, rather than executing, but that isn’t downtime. Reducing working hours, in most cases, will reduce time spent doing both those tasks. If Tolkien took an additional day off each week, it absolutely would have increased the time taken to complete his works.

Post by scarab92 » Sat, Feb 01, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #47

typewithrhythm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…