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Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

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Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#211

Post by wahnfrieden »

bb123 wrote: post #73
jjcm wrote: post #71

There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it.…

I’d happily take a 20% pay cut for a 4 day work week, if it was offered.

And would you work as much unpaid overtime as you would with a salaried 5 day work week job when pressured to by your boss, owner and peers?

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#212

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jjcm wrote: post #71

There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it.…

> There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well.

This assumes that the company and employees must have adversarial priorities. This is only true if that’s how the company wants to be structured

Employee owned companies have no such adversarial structures

The fact that a large number, not all, of billion dollar companies are not employee owned, is not a proof that it’s the optimal way to run a company. It’s only optimal for Capital

In fact most companies are employee owned if for no other reason than they are small LLCs you don’t know the name of but are, for example, driving your FedEx packages around.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#213

Post by nly »

IshKebab wrote: post #185
CapeTheory wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you get into the top tax band, the 20% cut in base pay only corresponds to an ~8% cut in take-home pay - a pretty good deal as far as I'm concerned. The problem is that employers who pay this much tend to be large US companies and therefore not well equipped to deal with requests for flexible working. Fortunately the law here means that such requests can't be dismissed out of hand, but unfortunately that doesn't…

Yes, though you could also put that money into your pension.

Yep, 20% in to pension would be huge

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#214

Post by UncleOxidant »

statquontrarian wrote: post #89

I've been doing a 20-hour 3 day work week (50% of total pay) for a few years now and I love it. I'm outperforming a full-time colleague in total output. Edited to add that the 3 day work week totals 20 hours.

This is exactly what I'd like to do now that I'm in my 60s. I'd still like to work for several more years, but not full time. How did you arrange this? It seems to not be common in tech.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#215

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

burningChrome wrote: post #119
jjcm wrote: post #71

There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it.…

In the mid aughts, I worked at a company that put ROWE (results oriented work environment) into practice. This approach basically meant you could work whenever you wanted, as long as you were meeting goals and metrics. There was a list of metrics you had to meet before being eligible for it. They kept it in place for two years and nothing really changed. Devs were still meeting their metrics and the company was still…

I'm really curious as to how ROWE works in practice for software developers, because the I'm extremely dubious.

In software development, there is usually an "infinite amount of work" to be done, so the important thing is to prioritize well as a lot of that work will never get done. But what does it mean to say "you've met all your objectives"? If you say "great, I finished all my objectives in 20 hours this week, see you at the beach", this company will eventually get killed by competitors who are just as productive yet work 40+ hours a week.

But fundamentally, the idea of "you've met your objectives, now you can go home" just feels like a fantasy in the world of software development.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#216

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

jjcm wrote: post #71

There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it.…

I worked a 4 day week for over a year while the pandemic was going. I'm not sure about total output, but per day, I was definitely more productive since everyone had different days off.

I got paid for 1 day LESS, so I eventually went back to 5 days. I'd rather get paid for a full day of work, while we all slack off a bit.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#217

Post by OJFord »

ben_w wrote: post #194
vidarh wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer's IT is in a different country. I'm not sure which. If it matters, that's an organizational problem, not a WFH problem.

At the rate things are currently changing, I won't be very surprised if non-trivial server capacity gets located in orbit thanks to some successor to Starlink. This will make remote work mandatory, even if it still can't fix all the possible issues.

Why would that make remote work any more mandatory than it is with 'the cloud' or data centres?

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#218

Post by bombcar »

ghaff wrote: post #163
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Companies (currently) compete by offering more money - if the pool of applicants dried up enough, perhaps they'd begin competing by offering more time. Because more money is what most candidates prioritize when job hopping, because when buying a house they can pay it with that money but can't pay it with more time off. The only people who prioritize less hours for less money are those who are already fortunate enoug…

>Because more money is what most candidates prioritize when job hopping, because when buying a house they can pay it with that money but can't pay it with more time off. Although you could argue that's already the case in a lot of Europe vs. parts of the US. Of course, it's an imperfect comparison because of the barriers to moving countries or even acquiring a remote job in a different country.

And money is money, it's a known quantity. Time is more ephemeral and for many "knowledge jobs" people work off the clock anyway; so having every Friday off may sound great but you may be (correctly) afraid it's going to turn into a half-day's work anyway.

And there are things you can do to turn money into time, it's possible but not as easy to go the other way around when you're salaried.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#219

Post by j45 »

figmert wrote: post #4
j45 wrote: post #3

Working four 10 hour days doesn’t seem as much of a stretch compared to 8 hour days.

The point of a 4-day work week isn't to cram the 5th day into 4 days, it's completely removing the 5th day, thus working 8 hours every day for 4 days, as opposed to 10 hours for 5 days.

To you.

In manufacturing industries this type of schedule is quite common. Not all industries are like tech or will follow it.

Companies that won’t do 4 days (32h) per week might do a slightly longer day instead. Maybe 9 hours worked with an hour lunch

Being paid for less hours (32) per week for 4 days is fine too.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#220

Post by brightball »

esafak wrote: post #176
brightball wrote: post #37

Counterpoint: When hiring people reasonably early out of school, they often just want the additional hours. I know of a business in my area that tried the 4 day work week and they ended up having to open on Fridays for half a day because people just wanted more hours (and money). Without it, the same people were just getting second jobs.

Give people the option to choose how much they want to work, and adjust the compensation.

That’s what ended up happening. People either wanted as much as possible or as little. 4 days didn’t really matter.
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