Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

scienceaim.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 268 posts

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#101

Post by jpollock »

Glancing through the study, I'm curious about both sample bias, and the lack of formal measurement. I'm not an expert in this type of thing, not even an amateur. I'm poking holes to see what's left.

"Participants were identified via media reports featuring Australian firms trialling the 100:80:100 model, in addition to companies listed on recruitment sites that specialise in 4DWW jobs. In other instances, eligible organisations were recommended by the participants themselves."

I'd expect organisations with positive results will be the ones recommended by other participants - "talk to these people, it worked for them too!"

I'm also interested in whether or not organisations converted all staff to 100:80:100, or if it was optional. Is the performance driven by peer pressure?

Finally, the participants' measures of productivity will have significant lag time in them, so it depends on trial's length, e.g. "revenue", "profit", "csat", "projects delivered on time", "net promoter score".

Table 1 has "Duration", but the units are unlabelled, if it's weeks, it's less than a year, months is probably better for seeing performance changes.

It's an interesting qualitative study, I'd certainly like a four day work week with no change in comp.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#102

Post by jmyeet »

christophilus wrote: post #23
oompydoompy74 wrote: post #20

Speaking as an American, I don’t give a shit if it increases productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We, as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to pay hefty ove…

That would be ok in a non-globalized world. In our world, any country that implements those laws will see a lot more offshoring.

This has the same energy as "if we tax the billionaires, they'll leave". That statement and yours are wrong. Why? Because if it was profitable, they would've done it already. Pretty much any employer would use you as fertilizer if there was an uptick in the stock price.

But let's say it's true. Great. Punish them with tariffs. They also have diminished political power because they're no longer a local employer.

We are colletively at a breaking point as a society where people legitimately can't afford to exist in a society that will soon mint its first trillionaire. This is beyond even French revolution levels of wealth inequality.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#104

Post by amazingamazing »

xg15 wrote: post #99
christophilus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be ok in a non-globalized world. In our world, any country that implements those laws will see a lot more offshoring.

So then all the productivity improvements are nothing more than boosting the hashrate of your crypto miner? You have to do it to not fall behind, but once everyone has done it, we all end up back in the same spot where we started?

Unironically, yes. One saving grace is in some ways, such as medicine and technology, more will be available to you, but not for less effort.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#105

Post by mmooss »

Here's the paper, with no paywall.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x

Hopkins, J., Bardoel, E.A. & Djurkovic, N. The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of the 100:80:100 model. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-07536-x

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#106

Post by xg15 »

amazingamazing wrote: post #38
oompydoompy74 wrote: post #20

Speaking as an American, I don’t give a shit if it increases productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We, as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to pay hefty ove…

This will never happen for the simple reason that there are some countries whose members are poor and so they are rightfully ready to work harder and longer for opportunities. A more important point is why is it that Americans objectively are richer yet feel poorer?

Depends what your comparison is. Are you comparing with the EU, China or Ethiopia?

Seems to me, the question is more why all that supposed prosperity doesn't translate to the living quality improvements one would expect.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#107

Post by Avicebron »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #88
anomaly_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just going to Galapagos your economy. Consumers won't put up with high prices and inferior goods. Unless you want to restrict internet/information access so your consumers don't know what they are missing out on.

I dunno. Consumers put up with a lot. Why can't I buy a cheap Chinese EV again?

Well the short version is that Robert Rubin and company sold our industries for parts years and years ago. And now we have to rebuild the industrial base from scratch

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#108

Post by xg15 »

amazingamazing wrote: post #104
xg15 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then all the productivity improvements are nothing more than boosting the hashrate of your crypto miner? You have to do it to not fall behind, but once everyone has done it, we all end up back in the same spot where we started?

Unironically, yes. One saving grace is in some ways, such as medicine and technology, more will be available to you, but not for less effort.

It's kind of understandable then that parts of the younger generations aren't motivated to continue that system? (Not just in the West, also in China, see "lying flat")

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#109

Post by azan_ »

nonfamous wrote: post #55
azan_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should realise that they will be the ones paying for it. Prices will increase a lot. People need to be aware of that. Personally I'm okay with that trade-off. Also corporations - when checks and balances work properly, which is frequently not the case unfortunately - are great and net benefit for humanity.

>> Prices will increase a lot. Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost. Most things we buy are priced according to what the consumer is willing to pay for it, and the balance sheet of the companies that sell most of the things we buy show there’s a lot…

> Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost.

Services and goods where lots of human labor is required get much more expensive with larger cost of labor. E.g. fast-food, food delivery. And there's nothing wrong with that of course - I'd rather pay 2x more for delivery than have people working on wages that are not enough to even feed them.

Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100

#110

Post by teaearlgraycold »

stanac wrote: post #53
oompydoompy74 wrote: post #20

Speaking as an American, I don’t give a shit if it increases productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We, as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to pay hefty ove…

> Employee owned co-ops are more humane Speaking as someone born in Yugoslavia. That's almost how it was in Yugoslavia. Companies where "owned by society", but workers had voting rights. Whenever there was a vote to decide whether extra profit should be used for capital investments and/or operational improvements or assigned to salaries budget, everyone voted to increase their salaries. Not every employ should be a c…

You still need free market economics. If consumers have enough choices then the company with comfortable employees that refuse to invest profits into their operation will lose to the better organized competitor prioritizing a balance between the two.
Post reply on HN