New Zealand Firm's Four-Day Week an 'Unmitigated Success' (theguardian.com) 281
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The New Zealand company behind a landmark trial of a four-day working week has concluded it an unmitigated success, with 78% of employees feeling they were able to successfully manage their work-life balance, an increase of 24 percentage points. Two-hundred-and-forty staff at Perpetual Guardian, a company which manages trusts, wills and estate planning, trialled a four-day working week over March and April, working four, eight-hour days but getting paid for five. Jarrod Haar, professor of human resource management at Auckland University of Technology, found job and life satisfaction increased on all levels across the home and work front, with employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment. Work-life balance, which reflected how well respondents felt they could successfully manage their work and non-work roles, increased by 24%. In November last year just over half (54%) of staff felt they could effectively balance their work and home commitments, while after the trial this number jumped to 78%. Staff stress levels decreased by 7 percentage points across the board as a result of the trial, while stimulation, commitment and a sense of empowerment at work all improved significantly, with overall life satisfaction increasing by 5 percentage points.
Already known (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Already known (Score:5, Informative)
Here's something even better (Score:5, Interesting)
A 4 x 8 hour schedule. I work 32 hours a week and could never go back. My day off is Wednesday, a tactical decision which preserves most if not all holidays, and more importantly gives me a maximum of 2 consecutive days of work. Highly recommended if you can pull it off.
Re:Here's something even better (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I've had that too for a while.
It's essentially like having your work week subdivided into two 2-day mini work weeks, which are a lot easier to stomach.
And when I would go to work It would be with an attitude of 'Let's get some shit done, wonder what they'll give me next, wonder what I've missed', rather than 'Oh shit, now I have to get through five days of this until I get to relax'.
Of course there's also the added bonus of being able to run all my errands, buy groceries, deal with the bank at my own leisure and without the crowds.
I've also shed some of my geeky pallor because I can take a long bicycle ride in the middle of the day and catch some sun.
I say 'had' because right now I've reduced my work week to 3 days at that company and am working two 5-hour shifts for another company from home, with flexible hours due to a difference in timezones, to test things out before I decide to switch to them full time.
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We austensibly work a 4-9-4 schedule, but realistically it is four 9-hour day and a "social half-day Friday". 9 hour days are fine with me, and I can see how a 36 hour week would have few compromises for people over 30... but the kids would struggle as they tend to need to put in more overtime to get work done.
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Absolutely. It was the most productive time of my life. No people pestering me, no phone calls, it was perfect. Unfortunately everyone else thought just like me.
Whoever said that nobody wants to work the graveyard shift never worked in IT...
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What bollocks, you should be ashamed of yourself for wasting your and our time with this stupid fake-anecdotal drivel. There's science and there are people like who just make up whatever pleases them.
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That's it? If you only worked four days a week, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
Lazy Kiwis (Score:5, Funny)
Get back to work! Those sheep won't shag themselves!
Missed Most Important Metrics (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope this firm's 4-day work week is an unmitigated success, but this story misses the most important metrics for measuring the success: increased worker productivity, increased retention, various recruitment KPIs, etc. These are the metrics which can show that this plan will work for a larger number of companies. If the only thing that happens is happier employees, it is a failed experiment. Just give every employee a million dollars if you only care about happy employees. If you want to find a way to improve employee well-being while running a sustainable successful business, then you need to real metrics for success.
Re:Missed Most Important Metrics (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Missed Most Important Metrics (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd bet continuous regular stress (five days a week) is more harmful than shorter lengths of slightly higher stress (four days a week).
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Keep in mind that the workload, the expectations, the things that needed to get done, those did not change. This is a pretty major point since being overworked or not getting tasks completed is a major contributor to stress.
That could certainly be true, but nothing in the story suggests that. I made no comment about whether or not this company has been successful in implementing a 4-day work week. I only said the story doesn't give even the most basic information necessary to rate its success.
For all we know, they had to hire 20% more people to make up for lost productivity. For all we know, projects that would have taken 8 months are taking 10 months instead, and perhaps their management doesn't have good enough project metri
Re:Missed Most Important Metrics (Score:5, Insightful)
I am as cynical as they come but how is this a failed experiment if you lose nothing but have happier employees?
Sure there'll be asshats who don't get science who think it is not in their favor unless the bottom line shows it but to anyone with more than two braincells to rub together it's pretty clear that if you don't lose anything by enhancing the lives of people around you, then it's a win. Even if only for the fact that you sleep better at night.
This has to be proven scientifically of course, but I have a hard time imagining how happier and thus more motivated workers could not improve your bottom line...
Also think about this: The work that took five days previously now gets done in four. That automatically leaves you one day more to be productive. You just need a few more bodies. In a sense this is similar to working shifts.
You're assuming some very important questions (Score:2)
> I am as cynical as they come but how is this a failed experiment if you lose nothing but have happier employees?
That's a VERY big assumption. You lose 20% of time they were working, so about 20% of their productivity, unless you have evidence otherwise. The article mentions no such evidence.
Competitive pressures may well mean that leads to losing the company, by delivering 20% less value to customers. Studies show it takes people some time to get back into what they were doing, they don't come
Re:You're assuming some very important questions (Score:5, Insightful)
It claims to have "employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment." That at least suggests a per-hour productivity increase.
I'd like to know some real metrics, too. I want four 7-hour days, and have observed that office work is not time-productive: a lot happens in downtime, where employees wait for other work to be done, or think on things and rest their minds to improve problem-solving. This is the phenomena that you cannot do 10 hours of work by compacting it into 5 hours even though you only spent 4 of those 10 hours actually working.
Multi-tasking represents one approach: do something else while you can't simply move to the next step. Multi-tasking sacrifices some productivity when the delay is internal: if you're dealing with programmers, engineers, marketing, and other creative problem solvers, loading them with a different task disrupts their capacity to solve all tasks.
Leisure is an alternate approach: get up and leave. Come back to this later.
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It claims to have "employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment." That at least suggests a per-hour productivity increase.
It may suggest it, but it does absolutely nothing to back it up. The report lists many actual numbers to show increased job satisfaction and other similar metrics in order to back up their claims. They have left out any metrics which come close to measuring productivity or overall business costs.
I would also love to only work four 7-hour days, but my desire for that and my own opinions about its effectiveness do not provide tangible proof that companies can use to convince their investors.
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Oh, it's not about investors. You have to implement this by requiring comp time for salaried workers (pay them for excess hours worked in a week--not time-and-a-half, just regular hours, and maybe only quarterly cash-out if they don't use it as vacation time) and setting the full-time work week to a shorter number of hours.
We need metrics and information on all of this to identify the economic consequences. Policy is not to be taken up lightly. It cuts both ways, too: one of my policies is modeled to
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> I am as cynical as they come but how is this a failed experiment if you lose nothing but have happier employees?
That's a VERY big assumption. You lose 20% of time they were working, so about 20% of their productivity, unless you have evidence otherwise. The article mentions no such evidence.
From the article: "Jarrod Haar, professor of human resource management at Auckland University of Technology, found job and life satisfaction increased on all levels across the home and work front, with employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment." (emphasis mine)
That sure looks like evidence from the article that productivity did not go down.
Competitive pressures may well mean that leads to losing the company, by delivering 20% less value to customers. Studies show it takes people some time to get back into what they were doing, they don't come in Monday morning and reset their brains to remember everything they were thinking on Friday. Rather, they have to spend time re-reading things they read on Friday, getting back into the groove.
The studies I've seen, mostly about programmers or engineers, said that it takes about 20 minutes to recover from an in
Designed=hoped. Changes always increase productivi (Score:2)
> designing how the four-day week would be managed so as not to negatively impact productivity."
They designed it with the hope of not negatively impacting productivity. I wrote a cover page hoping to get a CISO job. I'm not a CISO. The article gives multiple numbers measuring that employees liked it, but not a single number suggesting that productivity, even per-hour productivity, wasn't reduced. The author knows to give measurements to prove a point, and gives no measurements to indicate workers got t
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What makes me think that? Well, reading what TFA suggests...
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What makes me think that? Well, reading what TFA suggests...
I'm not sure I can say this without coming off as overly negative (this is the second time I tried writing this comment), but you really need to reconsider how you consume news. If you see an article which provides significant facts and figures, but then makes suggestions that their own figures don't even try to back up, that should be a HUGE red flag. You should never, under any circumstances, just take those suggestions at face value.
If you look at a past article [theguardian.com] about the same topic by the same author, s
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You really need more evidence than what you can gather yourself? Tell me, how many "productive" hours are really in your work day. I mean productive. Where you actually do productive, meaningful work. And how many hours do you spend in meetings, with eyes glazing over and actually being HAPPY that you can be there so you don't feel like you have to do something? How many hours are wasted because you can't figure something out that you SHOULD be able to figure out easily (usually happens after 9+ hours in th
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You lose 20% of time they were working, so about 20% of their productivity,
They lose 20% work time.
Not 20% productivity.
Productivity is the ratio between work done and time needed. And has nothing to do with time needed alone.
Simple example: you and I have to carry 100 buckets of water 4 stories upstairs. ... so you are less productive and even make *much* more money ... sad, is
You need 10 hours, I need 8. I'm 20% more productive. But we both do the same work.
Worst case: you get payed 11$/h and I only 10$/h
But how much work did they get done? (Score:2)
"I am as cynical as they come but how is this a failed experiment if you lose nothing but have happier employees?"
You're assuming they got 5 days of work done in 4 which I don't see written anywhere in the summary or in the linked to Guardian article. If they did do this then you're correct but what the parent is getting at is that if productivity didn't rise enough to make up for the missed day or at least come close to that then this experiment might be considered a failure.
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You're assuming they got 5 days of work done in 4 which I don't see written anywhere in the summary
Maybe try reading it again?
job and life satisfaction increased on all levels across the home and work front, with employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment.
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Maybe try reading what you posted? That in no way, shape, or form says "employees did 5 days of work in 4".
If their productivity went up 2% then they are still "performing better in their jobs" but are certainly not making up for the missed day. As the parent states, without actual productivity data you can't really call this experiment a success.
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You're assuming they got 5 days of work done in 4 which I don't see written anywhere in the summary
Maybe try reading it again?
job and life satisfaction increased on all levels across the home and work front, with employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment.
Maybe try reading it again, and notice the article never backs up those claims. It gives plenty of details figures for stress and job satisfaction, but no figures for worker productivity. It may be an oversite, but considering the same author did give figures for a similar attempt by a Swedish company in an early article [theguardian.com] about the same topic (which were pretty negative) the only assumption I think is warranted is there are no figures to back up your assumptions.
The workers could have performed better in tho
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Because you can make employees happier and more productive just by doing something different [wikipedia.org]. The novelty of being part of an experiment to try something different seems to be the cause of the benefits, not necessarily the change itself.
This is the reason double-blind studies exist. The control group isn't a group just left alone. It's a group which mimics participating in the experiment, bu
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This has to be proven scientifically of course, but I have a hard time imagining how happier and thus more motivated workers could not improve your bottom line...
OK, my devil's advocacy couldn't just let that stand, lol
I don't think my increased happiness in any of those scenarios would help the bottom line ...
Re:Missed Most Important Metrics (Score:5, Funny)
That will never work in the U.S.A., though. They don't use metric.
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Well that's the point, they don't care about the evil employer making an actual profit as long as the employees are happy until their jobs go belly-up.
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I hope this firm's 4-day work week is an unmitigated success, but this story misses the most important metrics for measuring the success: increased worker productivity, increased retention, various recruitment KPIs, etc. These are the metrics which can show that this plan will work for a larger number of companies. If the only thing that happens is happier employees, it is a failed experiment. Just give every employee a million dollars if you only care about happy employees. If you want to find a way to improve employee well-being while running a sustainable successful business, then you need to real metrics for success.
I really don't want this tried here in the US. We all know what will happen is that a company will try it and find that all the work can still get done in 4 days so an MBA will, instead of permanently reducing the number of work days from 5 to 4, just lay off 20% of the staff.
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I hope this firm's 4-day work week is an unmitigated success, but this story misses the most important metrics for measuring the success: increased worker productivity, increased retention, various recruitment KPIs, etc. These are the metrics which can show that this plan will work for a larger number of companies. If the only thing that happens is happier employees, it is a failed experiment. Just give every employee a million dollars if you only care about happy employees. If you want to find a way to improve employee well-being while running a sustainable successful business, then you need to real metrics for success.
I hope you are a business owner, with this outlook. Otherwise, I feel like there is some Stockholm syndrome going on here. Why is the most important metric worker productivity? Why are the needs of business elevated over the needs of people? Besides, the summary did say, "...with employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment. ... Staff stress levels decreased by 7 percentage points across the board as a result of the trial, while stimulation, commitment and
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What makes you think business owners are the only ones who benefit from companies being successful. In my opinion the USA has significant wealth inequality issues which need to be addressed, but we still need successful companies or else none of that matters.
No one would dispute that giving employees and extra 52 PTO days per year will make them happier and lower their stress. That is why those are not the important metrics, not because I don't find them to be important for the employees involved. What is i
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It's very hard to measure things like worker retention and recruiting from a two month trial. The novelty factor along would boost the number of applicants for jobs or on the off chance that a position might come up. Long term trials at a number of companies need to be done.
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It's very hard to measure things like worker retention and recruiting from a two month trial. The novelty factor along would boost the number of applicants for jobs or on the off chance that a position might come up. Long term trials at a number of companies need to be done.
True enough, so in reality this trial was more like giving employees an extra 8 PTO days this year. Regardless of any news articles claiming success, true success will come from the company deciding to make this change permanent.
That didn't cross my mind when I read the article, but it is also odd it doesn't mention whether the company plans on continuing the practice. That is a big missed question for the interviewer, unless the answer didn't fit the narrative they were striving for that is.
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Ya, pretty much. Doesn't work for a manufacturing facility unless you have split staffs
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Actually, giving workers a million dollars wouldn't make them happier. Studies show that the marginal hedonic value of income is essentially zero once you get to a certain point (about $70K/year). Studies of lottery winners show that a year after winning they are on average only slightly happier than before winning; and I'd bet if you confined the study to people who had more than $70,000 of income the hedonic value of winning would be zero.
It's a shame that money has such little hedonic value, because rese
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You will see the results only in the long run when you have fewer burnouts, fewer attention related accidents and higher retention and commitment levels. Because that's what you get out of something like that.
Ford paid his workers pretty much double what the competition paid, and of course in the short run it cost him more money. In the long run he had people who were committed to their job, who did pretty much everything to keep it, who gained experience and stayed and workers that identified with his comp
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Looks like they measured at least one of those three.
Not if they didn't provide any figures to back it up. If they didn't provide any figures at all I could consider it an oversight, but they did provide figures for employee satisfaction, stress levels, and a few others. What they missed is any actual figures measuring employer costs.
Another article [theguardian.com] about this company six months ago (by the same author) mentions a Swedish company that tried 6 hour work days and saw a 20% increase in costs. That is about what most people would expect from reducing their hours
This is America (Score:5, Funny)
In America, we do not strive to have a better life. We feel that at as long as we work as close to death as possible without actually dying, that is just good enough. Politicians should never, ever, tell a corporation what to do or how to treat their employees, since the employees should just be grateful they have a job in the first place.
This mentality is why America is the greatest country on earth. Our hard work has resulted in a strong government, powerful military, world-class health care, an education system second to none, the best infrastructure anyone has ever seen, and with everyone working so hard crime is at an all time low.
I mean really, what relevant data point does America NOT excel in relative to any other country?
Re:This is America (Score:5, Funny)
We feel that at as long as we work as close to death as possible without actually dying, that is just good enough.
Yep, that pretty well describes my American lifestyle. I'm pretty amazed how much I can physically, intellectually, and emotionally drain myself without ever managing to die.
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Your comment is modded as Funny, but this was what I saw growing up with my father. He would work a 10 hour day, come home with a stack of work, eat dinner, and then disappear into his office to do more work. On the weekends, he had an even bigger stack to work through. I once asked him why he did this and he replied that his boss expected this level of output from him. I told him that his boss only expected this because that's what he GAVE his boss by working nights and weekends. (He wasn't paid for the ex
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America is a continent, not a country. You must mean USian.
America [dictionary.com]
Noun.
1. United States.
2. North America.
3. South America.
4. Also called the Americas. North and South America, considered together.
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No, North America and South America are continents.
"America" is widely accepted shorthand for "United States of America".
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In the US, no contest. And I think somewhat in Europe, etc. But I understand it's a point of consternation for many other North- and South- Americans. And reasonably so.
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America is a continent, not a country. You must mean USian.
North America and South America are continents. America is not a continent.
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I prefer US myself, but it comes down to context - If you're talking about sovereign states, there's only one country with "America" in it's name - search for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On the other hand, the term "American" should probably be in the same class as European, African, or Asian - a continental identifier, rather than a country. Except, its not specific enough - There's two very different continents that include American in the name - are you North American, or South American?
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But if someone says America, the mean the largest nation in the Americas: the USA.
You might want to check that out if you are talking about land area.
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But if someone says America, the mean the largest nation in the Americas: the USA.
You might want to check that out if you are talking about land area.
I wasn't. But yes Canada is larger by total land mass, even though nearly half the country is largely uninhabited.
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The USA does have larger inhabitants than Canada, though.
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Why the sarcasm? I find it legitimately astonishing that people in the US think we have a real public transportation system. :-D
In related news: water is wet. (Score:3)
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This is purely anecdotal, of course, but I'd even go as far as to say you need the right kind of character to even manage 40 hours a week.
My gut says the sweet spot is probably somewhere around 7 hours a day, four days a week.
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That's actually a target for my Universal Dividend. It has an economic stimulus effect that pushes us into something like -12% unemployment, which means hyperinflation. Remember when Zimbabwe had 100-trillion-dollar bills? Yeah.
That disruptive mess will settle eventually, after much pain.
Alternately, you could make people more-poor. You do this by reducing working hours. If it takes 40 hours to produce something but work weeks are now 30 hours, then now you must work 1.3 weeks to purchase that same
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My gut says the sweet spot is probably somewhere around 7 hours a day, four days a week.
3.5 days per week is more efficient, because then you can have a Sunday through Wednesday shift and a Wednesday through Saturday shift and fully utilize your facilities during the day—two companies or teams, one building.
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But if they are as productive in 32 hours as they are in 40 hours, as the story suggests, are they actually working less or just being in the office less?
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from TFS:
" ...trialled a four-day working week over March and April, working four, eight-hour days but getting paid for five."
No, they are not working the same number of hours in a week.
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They also said performance improved, though they kind of skimmed over that. Several other studies have shown the same thing, especially for working more than 40 hours per week. It seems that working more than somewhere around 40 hours per week starts to consistently have a rather dramatic negative effect on your total weekly productivity, but there have been far fewer studies trying to locate the point of maximum total productivity.
Focus (Score:5, Informative)
Wonder if modern workplace, with so much interfacing with others by email and meetings, requires so much focus and switching, that your brain seriously needs the break.
I have been doing this (Score:4, Interesting)
Four 8-hour days per week? (Score:2)
I think the study misses the point. Most people would expect that a group that was "working four, eight-hour days [per week] but getting paid for five" would have more success balancing work and life than when they worked five, eight-hour days per week. The real news would be if the company was able to have productivity high enough under this arrangement to stay in business. Were the employees 25% more productive?
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From TFA:
Helen Delaney, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland Business School, said employeesâ(TM) motivation and commitment to work increased because they were included in the planning of the experiment, and played a key role in designing how the four-day week would be managed so as not to negatively impact productivity.
âoeEmployees designed a number of innovations and initiatives to work in a more productive and efficient manner, from automating manual processes to reducing or
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No where does that say that they did 5 days worth of work in 4 and they are incredibly vague about the efficiency claims they allude to.
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They started working more efficiently and they were suddenly able to keep efficiency higher because rest was longer is what I take from this.
Yes, but were they 25% more efficient? If they weren't, the company's competition, which did not make the change, would operate at a competitive advantage.
So ... (Score:2)
So, does this really mean that the company just didn't need as much labor as it had, so it is reducing the amount of hours worked?
As automation increases, you need less labor. I guess that can be spun as "we're not making you work as much!"
Or am I being too cynical?
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They said that job performance was maintained in four days - so presumably the employees were still getting a full weeks worth of work done in only four days. Which really isn't that surprising - several studies have shown that total weekly productivity drops dramatically for people working more than 40 hours per week, it's hardly a stretch to think that maybe 40 hours is longer than the "optimal total productivity point" as well. Sounds like they found that, at least for this company, 32 hours yielded ro
If you ever get a chance DO IT (Score:2)
Got sat down by the Manager because they finally noticed what this was going to cost them....
They wanted me to take a leave of absence to cover the time.
I offered to work 10:00 to 16:00 Tuesday to Friday for as many hours I had to cover.....
Best three months of my life!!!
I barely took breaks or lunch.
I found it easier to get there early and would get ribbed because I was never in a hurry to leave (more so than usual).
I take three day we
Nice... (Score:2)
I'd like to volunteer! (Score:2)
Not really surprising IMHO. (Score:2)
Work is disappearing. No point in keeping around bullshit jobs. Reducing time of presence probably improves bottom line because people feel like they're doing something useful in their time rather than just sitting around waiting for the hours to pass. If I were to start a company, I'd have 6 hour days and 35 days of vacation. C level execs would be allowed to do 50 hour weeks but only for a max of 12 weeks per year. ... And I probably would basically get rid of offices. Like these [automattic.com] two [uberspace.de] companies.
I did the 4 day week thing years ago... (Score:2)
78%!?!?! (Score:2)
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Exactly.
I'm sure the idea of working less but still getting paid full time wages is VERY appealing...to everyone but the employers. Where's the value in it for them?
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Or we Americans might increasingly seek to identify ourselves by healthier traits than what we do to pay the bills. After all, most people don't work a job because they want to work a job (even if they like their job), they do so because it's a necessity for having what they need and/or want and doing what they want to do with their lives.
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You're confusing America with Japan.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, next we should try a three-day week. Then imagine how much better a two-day week will be! When we get to zero, the work-life balance will be perfect!
At that point you wouldn't be working. Work-Life balance not found. But sure, I'd love a three or two day work week, if I could still maintain my comfortable lifestyle. Why wouldn't we want that?
I must say, it's impressive how conditioned we are to work. Our society's needs are over-filled. We produce too much, and throw away a lot of it. Automation is getting to the point where we could all work less, have more leisure time, and still have all the products we need. Yet when we hear stories like this one, in which people are working less and reporting measurable benefits, the reaction of many is to scoff at it. Why? Do we feel so trapped in our 40+ hour week lives that we resent the people making an improvement? Do we think the only thing of value in our lives is the work we do?
Personally, I work to live. If I could live a fairly comfortable life, like I do now, without working, I would quit my job tomorrow. The only reason I put up with the bullshit I do, day after day, is that it gets me a nice house and a nice car, the ability to travel and eat at restaurants, and all the other nice things money can buy (including a lack of financial anxiety). If I could have all that, with less of the daily bullshit, it would be great. I'd probably even give up a bit in order to work less. It's not laziness. It's the recognition that I want more out of life than being someone's employee.
I understand that our Capitalist and monetary systems require us all to stay on the hamster wheel. That's a whole other discussion. I'm just remarking on the negative reactions of many to the idea that working less would be nice.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd probably even give up a bit in order to work less. It's not laziness. It's the recognition that I want more out of life than being someone's employee.
But then you'd have less value to society. As long as we're capitalistic-focused, your value in society is in what you produce and what you consume. Do less of either, and you're a less valuable person to society.
Combine that with a puritanical mindset that god rewards the just and punishes the unjust, and you've got the wonderful world-view of working you described. It's going to be very hard to overcome that in a majority of the population, which would be necessary to make the societal shift to working less.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Insightful)
But then you'd have less value to society. As long as we're capitalistic-focused, your value in society is in what you produce and what you consume. Do less of either, and you're a less valuable person to society.
A major point of this company's change to a 32-hour work week is that overall performance improved. So by working 4 days per week instead of 5, these people are producing more. Pure capitalist ideology should dictate that many more companies make the same change.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism has nothing to do with societal values of persons.
But then again, our economies (I'm Dutch, I suppose you're from the U.S.) are not capitalist - too much regulation for that, for better or worse, and too many (near) monopolies. And in both our societies, the people that work the most are definitely not the ones considered most valuable. Quite the opposite. It seems those that are valued the most produce the least or are sometimes even counter-productive. They often have the most wealth 'though...
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd probably even give up a bit in order to work less. It's not laziness. It's the recognition that I want more out of life than being someone's employee.
But then you'd have less value to society. As long as we're capitalistic-focused, your value in society is in what you produce and what you consume. Do less of either, and you're a less valuable person to society.
Actually, that’s not true. At some point, you’re working too much to consume things. Having more time off means you can travel and consume goods and services all over the world. Admittedly, a single day won’t do that, but it still means you have more time to consume.
Also, you’re incorrectly assuming that the product of your work is the most valuable output that you can produce. For most of us in software, our work will become less valuable over time as technology changes, and will slowly be replaced by someone else’s work. So if we have any creative hobbies that could produce something that has lasting value, such as music, art, poetry, or prose, then our potential value to society is being squandered by spending all day five days per week working in our primary jobs, and we would contribute more to society by working less so we can work more, so to speak.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should your value to society be judged on whether or not you're someone else's employee? If I had a whole day to do anything I wanted, I'd write more, releasing more stories for people to read. I'd do more freelance, still making web sites/applications, but as my own employee. I'd do more with my kids, raising them to be even better members of society. I'd spend more time with my wife, perhaps "consuming" more during days out together. I might even try making my own little company if I had a good enough idea for one. My value to society shouldn't be judged on whether I'm currently at work or in a store buying something.
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Why should your value to society be judged on whether or not you're someone else's employee? If I had a whole day to do anything I wanted, I'd write more, releasing more stories for people to read. I'd do more freelance, still making web sites/applications, but as my own employee. I'd do more with my kids, raising them to be even better members of society. I'd spend more time with my wife, perhaps "consuming" more during days out together. I might even try making my own little company if I had a good enough idea for one. My value to society shouldn't be judged on whether I'm currently at work or in a store buying something.
Who said anything about should? The parent was merely explaining what IS.
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I'd probably even give up a bit in order to work less. It's not laziness. It's the recognition that I want more out of life than being someone's employee.
But then you'd have less value to society. As long as we're capitalistic-focused, your value in society is in what you produce and what you consume. Do less of either, and you're a less valuable person to society.
Combine that with a puritanical mindset that god rewards the just and punishes the unjust, and you've got the wonderful world-view of working you described. It's going to be very hard to overcome that in a majority of the population, which would be necessary to make the societal shift to working less.
Yeah, I can dig all that. It's kinda fucked up in my opinion; especially the idea that god is punishing or rewarding people. But it is the way it is, and I have found new peace in life by not resisting what is, or worrying about things I cannot/will not change.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Insightful)
The population is conditioned to believe that they need to work to death and to hate and attack anyone who offer an alternative solution. And the conditioning is so strong that I just need to write a small number of "trigger words" here to immediately attract enraged comments and hate for no apparent reason.
Re:Face Palm (Score:4, Insightful)
You have discovered the reason yourself: Conditioning The population is conditioned to believe that they need to work to death and to hate and attack anyone who offer an alternative solution. And the conditioning is so strong that I just need to write a small number of "trigger words" here to immediately attract enraged comments and hate for no apparent reason.
Oh, yes, I'm well aware. The pro-capitalist propaganda has been quite effective, the the US at least. Work, work, work, you're lucky to even have a job, so shut up! People think wage-slavery is the only way it can be.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
Performance improved (Score:5, Informative)
You missed the part where they said employee performance also improved - which is what the company paying them undoubtedly cares about. If you can pay your employees the same amount, they do more/better work, morale improves, AND they get an extra day off every week to focus on their own life, then everybody wins.
Maybe you could maintain/improve performance further with a three-day week, but I suspect the combination of the larger increase in per-hour productivity required, in combination with the smaller incremental reduction in stress, would make that difficult. Though it might well be worth investigating, in smaller increments to try to find the optimal "sweet spot". Perhaps 3 10-hour days, or 4 7-hour days or something would yield even greater productivity.
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My guess is that it's more like with a 5 day week, employees are working at 70%, with the remaining 30% lost to stress/low morale/worries about home life. After the 4 day week shift, employees worked at 90% with the increase coming from less stress/higher morale/less worries about home life. (Confession: Numbers pulled out of thin air. Use them as examples, not hard and fast figures.) This increase might not be able to be replicated if you shifted to a 3 or 2 day work week because then you'd get higher stre
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if four days is a bad idea, why not a six day week? What makes five days the perfect amount of time to work for all jobs?
The answer is that there is no optimal number that's right for all jobs. If you're a dairy farmer the cows have to be milked seven days a week. If you're a paper pusher, that next piece of paper can usually wait longer than a cow.
My own observations of desk workers is that the longer they spend at the desk, the larger proportion of time they spend at non-productive tasks. I've known people who habitually put in sixty hours a week who never are working very hard. Is the long week the cause of low work intensity, or vice versa? I'd say both: it's a vicious circle.
If you made no other changes, reducing a desk worker's week from five days to four would make him less productive, but probably not 20% less productive. But an intelligent plan wouldn't leave things to chance; you'd set a pace of work that is sustainable for four days but not for five. You'd disallow a lot of time-wasting activities that are tolerated now because the work week has plenty of hours in it.
Would that work for every job? Of course not. But there's no reason to think that five eight hour days is optimal for every job or person either.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also variations within each job. I'm a web developer. There are weeks when I could work three days of 8 hours each and finish all of my projects. Then there are weeks when I could work five 10 hour days and STILL not keep up.
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There does appear to be an optimum for most *people*. During WWII Britain discovered that there was no point in pushing people past 40 hours, you get less overall productivity and more mistakes. 40 hours was the optimum for a shortish term push for survival situation. The long term optimum seems to be somewhat less than 40 hours.
Your dairy farmer's operation would probably be more efficient if he hired someone to milk the cows a few days a week so he could take some time off.
Re:Face Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, next we should try a three-day week. Then imagine how much better a two-day week will be! When we get to zero, the work-life balance will be perfect!
Well actually, around here people like police, firefighters, certain public works employees work something like 3 on/3 off, 4 on/4 off with 12 hour shifts. Yes, when you are working you are working and not much else, but in the end, when you include vacation, stat holidays, etc, you have significantly more days off in the year than you have work days.
I'm sure it is not for everyone, but all the people I know who do this love it.
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I could live with a 0 day work week. Provided the money is ok.