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

beaconcrm.org

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

#111

Post by atonse »

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…

I’m all for experimenting with hours.

But it is something only information workers can do because productivity doesn’t translate linearly to hours put in.

But anything physical, manufacturing, etc, it is simply more time = more output.

Unless we use more and more automation and better tools of course. Which is also happening.

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

#112

Post by spaetzleesser »

prometheus76 wrote: post #92
yrgulation wrote: post #64

Strange how many orgs discover that working less hours or remote increases productivity for most people. It’s almost as if unstressed “workers” produce better quality work. There was an experiment whereby cows were shown to give more milk if not stressed. Certainly the same applies to humans. When will companies learn that milking their “workforce” of their energy doesnt yield the expected results but quite the oppos…

It was the fatal shift from "personnel" to "human resources".

At my company they aren't hiring "people" anymore but "resources". Even when looking for somebody internally to help out with a project, managers try to "find a resource", not "finding somebody".

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

#113

Post by jacquesm »

gargs wrote: post #105
jacquesm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

It's already a success elsewhere, I really don't see the point of a trial, they should just do it. In NL I don't know all that many people that still have regular 40 hour work weeks, the vast majority are 32, 28, 24 or even 20 hour workweeks, which incidentally helps a lot with leveling the pay gap between men and women.

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

#114

Post by timkam »

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…

The idea is that 4-hours work weeks for relatively highly skilled knowledge workers will actually help lower the costs for the social security system (less burnouts, early retirements) and a more productive society (instead of 'grinding out' pointlessly long hours, work less and contribute to society in your free time) -- work is merely one way to be productive in society.

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

#115

Post by spaetzleesser »

basisword wrote: post #80
orzig wrote: post #4

If you were explaining the world to an alien, it would be hard to justify the lack of diversity in working arrangements. I applaud any such non standard option in the labor market - may your office be full of good fits!

People in a company often collaborate so having them work at the same place/time is useful. Companies often collaborate or use each others services so having all companies and all people work at the time is useful. Parents need their kids taken care of while they work, so school hours mirror (to an extent) working hours and vice versa. All very explainable I think.

"People in a company often collaborate so having them work at the same place/time is useful."

the funny thing is that the same people who talk about collaboration at the office are often the decision makers that set up open offices where everybody wears headphones and nobody ever talks to each other.

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

#116

Post by danaris »

sshah1983 wrote: post #10

I still don’t understand the 100% as productive in 80% of the time. The math doesn’t check out there unless the expectation is people are working 10 hr days Mon-Thurs. Even in that scenario, not everyone has the stamina to execute at that pace and it also makes it hard to recruit anyone with a kid who needs to navigate school dropoffs/pickups etc.

In addition to what other people are saying about productivity not being linear:

Screw productivity.

We, as a society, produce vastly more than enough stuff of all kinds for everyone to live comfortably. Insisting that everyone must continue working a 40-hour week every week forever just because that's the best that could be negotiated the first time workers successfully fought for their rights after the Industrial Revolution is foolishness.

Total productivity has skyrocketed since computers came on the scene and helped to streamline millions of different processes. And where have those gains gone? Eaten up by the very wealthy.

A 4-day work week is one very small step toward letting us, the regular workers who actually produce all the stuff, genuinely share in the spoils that streamlining created.

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

#117

Post by Omniusaspirer »

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…

Agreed on all points. Europe should serve as a warning to the rest of the world of what happens when you become complacent- the decline from earlier centuries to now is just staggering and shows no signs of slowing. Many of the lauded social benefits aren't actually sustainable long term and the stifling business climate has forced governments to become increasingly protectionary which is a death spiral for competitiveness long term.

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

#119

Post by musingsole »

viraptor wrote: post #6
orzig wrote: post #4

If you were explaining the world to an alien, it would be hard to justify the lack of diversity in working arrangements. I applaud any such non standard option in the labor market - may your office be full of good fits!

I'm not saying it's right or the most effective option, but I believe it would be trivial to justify: it's easier to organise something in a group if everyone's available at the same time. I'm the only person in the team working 4 day week and even that was a bit awkward in planning. (still totally worth it)

> it's easier to organise something in a group if everyone's available at the same time

I think most workgroups have effectively been paying extremely high overhead in social costs just so the organization could have the option to organize easily. The problem then is that meetings are called flippantly. If it's hard to get everyone in a room, you'll do a better job capitalizing on when it happens.

The downside is there really are a large array of tasks that a group can tackle better than an individual, but I've never seen a corporate group meaningfully recognize or organize for those tasks. Far more often, I get pulled into meetings because some specific individual or another is lacking in autonomy and expertise.

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