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

We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

beaconcrm.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 351 posts

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#101

Post by jacquesm »

gargs wrote: post #97
jacquesm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you won't be paid 100% for 40 hours, you will be paid 100% for 32 hours. And people that work 40 hours should get more than those that work 32 hours. By the way, it is common to be paid far less for 40 hours than you should receive as well, and plenty of people work unpaid overtime who would be happy just to work the 40 hours they get paid for. Salary negotiations are always tricky, especially if you don't know y…

That's not what the trial is; workers will be paid 100% of their salary for 80% of their usual time. That's what makes it different from a 'flexible hours' pilot. Overtime is extremely uncommon even in Europe and has to be agreed upon in contract, and even then most employers just provide extra time off instead of money for full-time workers.

Yes, but eventually that will normalize to a raise if the trial is made permanent, the reason they structure it like that is if they revert that the employees won't see it as a pay cut.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#102

Post by jacquesm »

basisword wrote: post #98
jacquesm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get paid your salary and are expected to do a minimum number of hours + any more reasonably required. This is a geographically limited factoid, and even then lots of companies do pay overtime. But in those cases where they do not: I always wonder how those companies would respond if I treated them the way they treat their employees. > You don't get extra for those extra hours in a salaried job so I don't see wh…

>> This is a geographically limited factoid Possibly but it's widely true for UK based tech companies and that's what this article was about. Whether it's fair or not and treatment of employees is a whole other discussion.

UK tech companies can and do pay for overtime, just not all of them and the ones that don't would like to have that discussion squelched as much as possible.

Talking about a 'four day work week' is meaningless if you at the same time claim that you have to work more than those four days per week to satisfy your employment contract, it just turns one vague thing into an even vaguer thing.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#103

Post by snowAbstraction »

kqr wrote: post #87
belter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Which country and city governments have a four-day work week?": https://buildremote.co/four-day-week/4-day-work-week-countri... I am surprised the lack of mention of Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands. Most business persons I contact, normally only work 4 days a week.

I live in Sweden and have never hard of any company doing a four day week. The closest I get is one of my first jobs which had a 37.5 hour week (rather than the customary 40 hours) but again, spread out over five days. That said, some of the last few weeks at the time of writing have in practise turned out to be four day weeks due to public holidays. Could this be what causes the confusion?

In Sweden, a significant number of parents with young children who work 80% so maybe that has caused the confusion.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#104

Post by anuraj »

What I don't understand about Europe is

1. They are facing a huge negative demographic dividend.

2. They are facing steep inflation, low energy and food security and lower economic growth.

3. High social security costs may not be sustainable in the long term.

4. Finance is crumbling and real economy is taking over. Monetary expansion had its run and is no longer the panacea.

How will they handle this and still emerge unscathed while competing with China and India and Indonesia and the likes.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#105

Post by gargs »

jacquesm wrote: post #101
gargs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the trial is; workers will be paid 100% of their salary for 80% of their usual time. That's what makes it different from a 'flexible hours' pilot. Overtime is extremely uncommon even in Europe and has to be agreed upon in contract, and even then most employers just provide extra time off instead of money for full-time workers.

Yes, but eventually that will normalize to a raise if the trial is made permanent, the reason they structure it like that is if they revert that the employees won't see it as a pay cut.

Which is fine. The goal of the trial is to reward employees for increased productivity (historical trends tell an impressive story) by offering them the opportunity to keep their existing salaries by working (and therefore stressing themselves) less.

Sure, high performers should be rewarded using subjective metrics, which is already the case for blue collar workers. This trial gives people the opportunity to not be penalized for working less, which is the case with all the existing flexible hour arrangements. If successful, I have no doubt that this would lead to a longer term bigger change in what counts as full-time employment when it comes to taxation, immigration, and retirement.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#106

Post by danaris »

JamesAdir wrote: post #29

I really can't wrap my head around this four-day week trend. If the organization is focused on KPI's so why does it matter if people work one day or four-days? If the organization is focused on time spend no work (either in office or remotely) how can work be done in 80% of the time? Really don't understand how it works in day-to-day. It resembles the unlimited vacation days policy which was later found out to be unh…

There is ample research showing that humans can't be consistently productive for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm less personally familiar with research on 4-day weeks, but I've seen several studies with plenty of rigor that showed that working 6 hours a day, people were, on average, at least as productive as they were working 8 hours a day.

Banish from your mind the idea that "hours spent at work" translates directly into productivity. My butt in my seat doesn't produce anything. My brain is what produces code, designs, problem-solving, ideas, etc, and it, like any other part of my body, needs periodic rest in order to function properly.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#107

Post by mjburgess »

anuraj wrote: post #104

What I don't understand about Europe is 1. They are facing a huge negative demographic dividend. 2. They are facing steep inflation, low energy and food security and lower economic growth. 3. High social security costs may not be sustainable in the long term. 4. Finance is crumbling and real economy is taking over. Monetary expansion had its run and is no longer the panacea. How will they handle this and still emerge…

Immigration -- they'll be a move to a two-tired (zero-hours, contract-only, fire-at-will) base largely made up of the young and immigrants. Then gold-plated 4d work-from-home jobs for 45-65s.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#108

Post by LegitShady »

belter wrote: post #75
simonswords82 wrote: post #33

This is part of a wider scheme in the UK whereby 60 firms and 3000 employees are piloting 4 day weeks. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/04/thousands-o... From the article: Employees from a wide range of businesses and charities are expected to take part in the scheme, which will run initially from June to December, including the Royal Society of Biology, the London-based brewing company Pressure Drop, a…

"Which country and city governments have a four-day work week?": https://buildremote.co/four-day-week/4-day-work-week-countri... I am surprised the lack of mention of Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands. Most business persons I contact, normally only work 4 days a week.

I've worked in offices before (engineering, architectural) that have one day a week where they don't answer the phone except for emergencies, and lets say friday is 'catch up and do paperwork day'.

Externally it might seem like 4 days a week, but its actually 5 with one where you can't reach them.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#109

Post by [deleted] »

anuraj wrote: post #104

What I don't understand about Europe is 1. They are facing a huge negative demographic dividend. 2. They are facing steep inflation, low energy and food security and lower economic growth. 3. High social security costs may not be sustainable in the long term. 4. Finance is crumbling and real economy is taking over. Monetary expansion had its run and is no longer the panacea. How will they handle this and still emerge…

[deleted]

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#110

Post by jstummbillig »

anuraj wrote: post #104

What I don't understand about Europe is 1. They are facing a huge negative demographic dividend. 2. They are facing steep inflation, low energy and food security and lower economic growth. 3. High social security costs may not be sustainable in the long term. 4. Finance is crumbling and real economy is taking over. Monetary expansion had its run and is no longer the panacea. How will they handle this and still emerge…

Higher import tariffs are a mid term solution, but in the end nation states and national governance are dysfunctional concepts for an ultimately globalized world.
Post reply on HN