Largest UK Public Sector Trial of Four-Day Work Week Sees Huge Benefits (theguardian.com) 226
"In the largest public sector trial of the four-day week in Britain, fewer refuse collectors quit," reports the Guardian, "and there were faster planning decisions, more rapid benefits processing and quicker call answering, independent research has found."
South Cambridgeshire district council's controversial experiment with a shorter working week resulted in improvements in performance in 11 out of 24 areas, little or no change in 11 areas and worsening of performance in two areas, according to analysis of productivity before and during the 15-month trial by academics at the universities of Cambridge and Salford... The multi-year study of the trial involving about 450 desk staff plus refuse collectors found:
- Staff turnover fell by 39%, helping save £371,500 in a year, mostly on agency staff costs.
- Regular household planning applications were decided about a week and a half earlier.
- Approximately 15% more major planning application decisions were completed within the correct timescale, compared with before.
- The time taken to process changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit claims fell....
Under the South Cambridgeshire trial, which began in January 2023 and ran to April 2024, staff were expected to carry out 100% of their work in 80% of the time for 100% of the pay. The full trial cut staff turnover by 39% and scores for employees' physical and mental health, motivation and commitment all improved, the study showed. "Coupled with the hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money that we have saved, improved recruitment and retention and positives around health and wellbeing, this brave and pioneering trial has clearly been a success," said John Williams, the lead council member for resources...
Scores of private companies have already adopted the approach, with many finding it helps staff retention. Ryle said the South Cambridgeshire results "prove once and for all that a four-day week with no loss of pay absolutely can succeed in a local government setting".
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
- Staff turnover fell by 39%, helping save £371,500 in a year, mostly on agency staff costs.
- Regular household planning applications were decided about a week and a half earlier.
- Approximately 15% more major planning application decisions were completed within the correct timescale, compared with before.
- The time taken to process changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit claims fell....
Under the South Cambridgeshire trial, which began in January 2023 and ran to April 2024, staff were expected to carry out 100% of their work in 80% of the time for 100% of the pay. The full trial cut staff turnover by 39% and scores for employees' physical and mental health, motivation and commitment all improved, the study showed. "Coupled with the hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money that we have saved, improved recruitment and retention and positives around health and wellbeing, this brave and pioneering trial has clearly been a success," said John Williams, the lead council member for resources...
Scores of private companies have already adopted the approach, with many finding it helps staff retention. Ryle said the South Cambridgeshire results "prove once and for all that a four-day week with no loss of pay absolutely can succeed in a local government setting".
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
If 4-day weeks are so productive (Score:2)
I say we go for 3-day weeks next!
100% of work in 80% of time should mean ... (Score:3)
If the work can be done in 20% less time (4 days instead of 5), then shouldn't ALL time-based metrics get better by 20%? If they fall short of 20%, then there's something not quite right. The metrics given in TFS are kind of ... odd. There were 11 areas where things got better, 11 neutral, and 2 bad. Let's see a balanced summary, please. Even the Guardian's article is more even-handed.
The report linked in TFS is not, in fact the report, but minutes from the council meeting where they discussed the results. An important factor mentioned there is that the number of survey responses from study participants was very low -- exactly how low was not specified in the minutes, but it was of sufficient concern that it was discussed at the meeting.
But, hey, another slanted submission on this subject? Not surprised.
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Nope. Think about it for a minute and you may figure out why you are dead wrong.
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What more evidence do you need?
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This logic works for factory robots where output is at a steady, fixed rate.
When it comes to clerical jobs, jobs where knowledge and reasoning are required, human beings have a limit. No matter how many hours they work, that limit cannot be exceeded. They unconsciously protect themselves from over-work by slowing down and taking breaks, or the quality of their work deteriorates.
There is some optimal amount of working time that produced maximum productivity, and it's not 40 hours a week.
There is also the mor
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This logic works for factory robots where output is at a steady, fixed rate.
When it comes to clerical jobs, jobs where knowledge and reasoning are required, human beings have a limit. No matter how many hours they work, that limit cannot be exceeded.
And what limit is that? I find that my limits are far past some others. Some people have a limit of 32 24, 16, 8 hours, and some people simply aren't able to be efficient at any workweek length.
There is some optimal amount of working time that produced maximum productivity, and it's not 40 hours a week.
On what do you base that? This study that is almost a monovariant? Some possibly hand picked office and trash collection workers are an easy study target group. It is pretty obvious that if they work less hours for the same pay, people will think that's the schitz.
For a while. We went from whatever workweek the
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I'm sorry, that's a bunch of malarkey. Things getting done faster means things getting done faster, period. Your argument about optimality and slowing down would be just as applicable to a 4-day week as a 5-day week, so is a vacuous argument.
The summary, which you provided, was severely lacking. It did not mention any of the neutral or negative impacts. The positive impacts were echoed from The Guardian's article, and, without any evidence to the contrary, must be assumed to have been cherry-picked. If
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Your argument about optimality and slowing down would be just as applicable to a 4-day week as a 5-day week
This is true if you assume humans are linear. May also be helpful to assume they are frictionless spheres in a vacuum.
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If the work can be done in 20% less time (4 days instead of 5), then shouldn't ALL time-based metrics get better by 20%? If they fall short of 20%, then there's something not quite right. .
Yup, something is not right at all. I want to see this extrapolated to all careers and jobs, making the 32 hour week universal. Using office workers and trash collectors as the universal employee metric probably will give you the idea that the 32 hour workweek is magick, and therefore all employees will achieve the same results. And they knew it too, that's why trash collectors was chosen as the alternate group.
Of course that nice raise equivalent with less time at work will spur a lot of employees to wor
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One of the most incredibly frustrating things about modern life is that nobody can get good at their job because nobody can stay in their job. The only way to get ahead anymore isn't through promotions but by jumping from company to company and role to role so that everybody is always new to their job.
Except for a handful of fake jobs that tend to go to wealthy well connected peo
no shit. (Score:3, Interesting)
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And that is just it. It also shows pretty conclusively, that "work" is typically done wrong.
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But imagine parents having a whole day free without the kids each week. Have you any idea how much easier that makes life for famil
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It's definitely not a pay rise.
- The workers have no more disposable income.
- It didn't cost their employer anything.
Some will have increased costs due to using more electricity at home and the like for an extra day, and some will have lower costs e.g. one day less of childcare.
What they all gain is a better work/life balance and more free time.
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"The workers have no more disposable income."
But the workers do have more leisure time at no cost. Normally to get more leisure time you have to pay for services or labor-saving devices, etc. Any rational person would consider those workers to have gained something of value.
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It's definitely not a pay rise.
- The workers have no more disposable income.
What it is, is increasing the pay for less time worked. You might not call that a pay raise, but they are indeed making more per hour worked.
It didn't cost their employer anything.
Well now, that depends. Some employers will have to hire more people. Not all jobs are in offices that are already pretty inefficient that working less hours will enter the employees into a now blissful and happy situation.
Some will have increased costs due to using more electricity at home and the like for an extra day, and some will have lower costs e.g. one day less of childcare.
What they all gain is a better work/life balance and more free time.
Sigh... work/life balance. What does that even mean? Some people don't want to work at all. Some people such as myself have the energy to have a w
Re:no shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right wing magical thinking at its worst. Human beings are not robots. You can't just crack the whip a few more times and expect productivity to increase.
This is the employer optimizing their process to make the most efficient use of their resources. They were wasting money lighting and heating the office, running all the equipment for an extra 7.5 hours a week when they had already reached the limit of what their employees were capable of.
Amazon style "work them till they drop, then find another drone" doesn't work for many knowledge jobs, and is mostly illegal anyway in the UK.
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What is it with some of today's Slashdot readers which one would assume to be working in some IT context that they can't do basic arithmetic? It's obviously an hourly pay rise, but not an actual weekly/monthly/yearly pay rise. And with the money the employer saved, the employees might just as well have deserved an actual, weekly/monthly pay rise on top.
Also, with "normal people" you seem to mean "slaveholder minions", and as obvious as it is that China can still, for now, create cheap productivity through e
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shock horror, give people a 20% payrise (which is effectively what this is) and they are less likely to leave and happier at work.
What I was interested in was the timeframe. It's pretty well known that pay raises only increase happiness for a few months (3? 6? I can't remember.) So if they found a productivity boost for three months, I'd say the study was too short. This study ran for 15 months so I would expect that was long enough for people to have normalized.
I hope there are more detailed studies to show the trend lines (e.g. did decision making shorten for a while and start gradually creeping longer?). Did the more rapid decision
Re: no shit. (Score:2)
No itâ(TM)s not. Theyâ(TM)re doing the same amount of work for the same amount of pay. Theyâ(TM)re just not constrained to sit in a cubicle and stare into an existential crisis for 8 hours a week.
Re: no shit. (Score:2)
People forget this is our ultimate goal (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is, there's just not as much work to be done these days. Mundane office tasks that used to take hours now take minutes thanks to electronic records keeping and other tools. Ignore business people who want do drive subordinates ever faster. They are, frankly, a bunch of psychopaths to be shunned.
The whole point of developing technology and making everything more efficient is to leave more time for health, leisure, and personal development. Compare labor intensive farming 300 years ago to machine automated farms today. Compare manufacturing times for clothing and other goods. That trend ought to continue until we are working just a few hours, 2 or 3 days a week to produce what we need to live, and spend the rest of the time on hobbies, passions, family and friends.
This is what we want! This is where we are headed! Don't let a handful of powerhungry lunatics tell you any different. Don't believe the lies. Efficiency gains are supposed to push towards a life of leisure for all, not a hellish state of producing tons and tons of unnecessary work with as few people as possible. That's insane.
Re:People forget this is our ultimate goal (Score:4, Insightful)
I could not agree more. But the majority is deeply scared of change. Hence they want to stick to the old model, no matter what and no matter how stupid their arguments have to get (see some postings here for some stellar examples of that stupidity).
Eventually, we need to get down to something like a 2-day week and many people not working at all. Completely expected as we are nearing the end of the industrial age and it is not people creating productivity anymore. For society to survive, we still need to distribute wealth in a sane way so everybody has enough. Obviously, the virtue-signalling assholes defining themselves completely by the hours they "work", cannot understand that and aggressively oppose it. They have held us back long enough though.
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Enough for all needs to be met.
This shifts the argument to what's a need and what isn't, but your ridiculous example is useful here as a device, because we can easily define "enough" as being somewhat less than a jet in every driveway.
Food, clothes, shelter, safety, and enough mental stimulation to not go bananas would be a good starting point.
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Yep. It is really not hard to answer this question competently. That some people pretend the answer is unclear is just FUD spread by assholes that want to sabotage the discussion.
Time (Score:3)
Why do we still have a 7 day week anyway?
(Days and years make sense because of the movement of this planet - but when we move to other solar systems it might change)
Re:Time (Score:4, Interesting)
The French tried a 10 day week just after the revolution and the Russians tried a few week lengths between WW1 and WW2 but both reverted back to a seven day week. Interesting to note that in both cases suppression of religious practice seems to have been a significant factor. In the case of the French I believe the change was fairly unpopular primarily because workers went from 6 to 8.5 days between a full day of rest.
There have been plenty of thought bubbles on the subject but I honestly don't see any change to the week in the foreseeable future. There is zero chance of getting widespread agreement with significant Muslim, Christian, and Jewish populations likely to be fairly solidly against it and plenty of other people won't want to change because they don't like change and/or don't see any great benefit. From an IT perspective I could only see it as a major pain having to support both in software. Excel is painful enough with dates as it is.
I'll consider the possibility it could happen in the distant future shortly after the US embraces metric and completely abandons their pounds, feet and miles.
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or 70 hour weeks (Score:2)
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There are always some psychos around. This one seems to be a liar in addition. This is nothing by repulsive virtue signalling.
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No healthcare, no sick days, no holidays, no stability, frequent wage-theft, no effective health & safety regulation, horrifically long & quite frankly dangerous working hours, & no accountability for the arseholes at the top keeping all the money. It sounds quite Dickensian to me. Perhaps we should rename it accordingly, the "Dickensian economy"?* *In case you haven't
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The median businessman has no idea how capitalism works, and at the 90th percentile they are actively opposed.
The actual capitalist recognizes they profit from the output of labor, not the labor itself. Paying for more labor just for the sake of having more labor is wasting money!
Productivity measures are dehumanising (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Productivity measures are dehumanising (Score:2)
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It is rare to have a job where a 'ticket' is a standard unit of work, but quite common for management to use a 'ticket' as a standard measure of work.
This of course leads to situations where workers resent the metrics, and some game them by arranging to get a high percentage of tickets with low time and effort requirements.
The best bit is where management decides it is motivating to post a leaderboard.
Re:100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I am skeptical of the promises made by 4-day-week advocates, your approach is exactly the kind of attitude that makes people waste time. If everything is always by the numbers, "Did you finish your 75 calls today?" then people will do exactly that and no more. Crack the whip and ask for 85 calls, you're going to see people quitting. Who on earth wants to work on a treadmill? No, we are human. We need breaks, chatter, and positive reinforcement. Force people's noses to the grindstone, and you'll get neither more work, nor better work, out of people.
Re:100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things that you lose when working flat out is preparatory time. Getting ready for a presentation is just as important as the presentation itself. You lose the ability to analyze data and recognize trends. You lose the ability to bounce ideas off of co-workers to see if they have insights into working smarter. Fitting five days of work into four days means the work still gets done but leaves little time to handle emergencies or plan for future work. Depending on your job description, preparation is necessary expenditure of your time.
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax." ~~ Abraham Lincoln
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That depends on what is cut out when you switch from 5 days to 4 days. I've read that they end up cutting out a lot of cruft - excess meetings, for example.
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How will managers appear busy without having meetings scheduled all day?
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How will managers appear busy without having meetings scheduled all day?
I would like to know where this idea that managers have multiple meetings each week comes from. In all the decades I've been working the only time management has had meetings was when a) something important was coming up and it was better to have everyone present rather than email or b) a weekly/monthly scheduled meeting to keep everyone apprised. I can't remember a single time they had a meeting simply for the sake of a meeting.
Maybe I've been lucky. Maybe where I've worked management lets their people do
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How will managers appear busy without having meetings scheduled all day?
I would like to know where this idea that managers have multiple meetings each week comes from. In all the decades I've been working the only time management has had meetings was when a) something important was coming up and it was better to have everyone present rather than email or b) a weekly/monthly scheduled meeting to keep everyone apprised. I can't remember a single time they had a meeting simply for the sake of a meeting.
Maybe I've been lucky. Maybe where I've worked management lets their people do their jobs with little interference.
The endless meetings thing is a meme. No doubt some places have more than needed, but I just think it is a story some people tell themselves.
Now yes, I was in a "lot" of meetings, but they all had a purpose. Presenting test results mainly. Also presenting hypotheses and getting feedback. Can't think of any way to improve upon the ability to interact with the researcher directly.
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Clearly, you've never actually *been* a manager. We managers find meetings to be just as annoying as you, they get in the way of what we're really trying to accomplish. I call them a necessary evil.
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What you don't realize, is that people don't read emails.
This argument drives me batty because it's self-fulfilling. If you start over-relying on meetings then people stop reading email because they know they have to attend a meeting about it anyway. It's also something a capable manager should be able to do something about.
not everyone has the ability to ingest and absorb information in written form. Some need to *hear* it
This "types of learning" thing has been completely debunked. Some people may enjoy meetings and interacting with people over reading an email, but they are not incapable of absorbing information via reading.
Your point about asking questions
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Many meetings are useless, to be sure. But they do have an important function in business. Whenever you have people working together, they have to coordinate and communicate. Eliminate that, and you get a result worse than without. The trick is to make meetings productive, not eliminate them (all).
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Note how I said "excess" meetings. IE I never advocated for eliminating all meetings. Just, well, some businesses have too many of them.
What it looks like to me is that there's actually a limit to task engagement for most people. As a result, they tend to fill up the extra time with "make work". Cut down on hours and they can eliminate the make work, becoming more productive.
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That depends on what is cut out when you switch from 5 days to 4 days. I've read that they end up cutting out a lot of cruft - excess meetings, for example.
They conveniently chose some businesses that can easily change to a shorter workweek.
We need to think outside of our own situations. Not everyone is an office worker. There is work that must be done 24/7/365. That would be things like metalworking. Which requires different shifts, and if we are going to a 32 hour workweek, that means that we'll need new people. to fill in the gaps.
We need to understand there is a whole litany of service work. New employees will be needed to fill in at the Starbucks, unle
Re:100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:5, Insightful)
Your major objections are all the same as those that were present when we switched to the 40 hour work week. Of course there will be those industries that will need to adapt but things seemed to have worked out fine the last time we made a big change like this.
In support of this likely working out just fine I'd like to point out the truly massive increase in productivity we've seen since the 40 hour work became a thing and how little of the extra wealth that's been created has made it to the American worker. Just since WW2 our levels of worker productivity have skyrocketed https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org] and yet since the 70's we've seen a shrinking middle class, not an increasing one https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/t... [pewtrusts.org]. There is an abundance (I'd say overabundance) of wealth available to handle the costs of those industries who can't as easily move to less hours such as those in service industries.
As for your comments that you personally would just do 40 hours anyways, I honestly think that's kind of sad but I don't think it would matter much once the inevitable cultural changes happened around this. You don't have a personal life you'd rather get to rather than do free labor for a place you are only going to because they pay you? Maybe look into that some as you're in for an early death come retirement if that's the case. Those folks who have no lives but work don't make it long when they can't work anymore. My Dad didn't and he was a classic case of this.
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YMaybe look into that some as you're in for an early death come retirement if that's the case. Those folks who have no lives but work don't make it long when they can't work anymore. My Dad didn't and he was a classic case of this.
I better hurry up and die, because I'm already approaching the average lifespan in the USA. If I make it a few years after that, I'll reach the average lifespan in "superior" countries. What is more, some of my compatriots are within spitting distance of 100. On the other hand, there were two employees who managed to die before their first retirement check came in. They weren't the crazy people like me either. Both were firmly inculcated with the concept that work is evil, that all those above them on th
Re:100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. In most jobs, quality of the work delivered matter a lot more than quantity. The "slave owner" mindset employers are far too stupid and far too hell-bent on making their employees suffer to be able to see that. It is time we get rid of those cretins that hold everything back.
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In most jobs, quality of the work delivered matter a lot more than quantity.
From what I'm seeing, quality of the work doesn't enter into the picture. Microsoft, Tesla, Google, AT&T, Linksys, the list goes on.And let's not getting into home builders.
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The fact that you point to these companies as examples of non-existent quality, means you haven't experienced a world without quality.
Those annoying Windows updates that work (nearly) every time, fully automatically, including BIOS updates when needed? That update process is a feat of engineering. In the 90s, there was no such thing as automatic updates, certainly not for the BIOS, and the installs that we did have, often had to be tweaked by hand because they didn't update everything they should have. It
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Let me add MSI to the list [slashdot.org]. Give it another day and I'll add someone else.
But yes, let us keep hearing excuses.
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Indeed. Let's say MS (which is really bad in the product quality department) had remote vulnerabilities that are easy to exploit every week. They would be out of business pretty fast. But let's say they do not deliver any new "features" for a few years. The world would still buy their crap.
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I would be willing to bet that this kind of prep time, is often done "off the clock" by workers in this study. At least, by the workers who care about their job.
Goodhart's Law (Score:3)
If everything is always by the numbers, "Did you finish your 75 calls today?" then people will do exactly that and no more.
Every measure that becomes a target becomes a bad measure
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Indeed. The typical "manager" is neither mentally equipped not educated to be able to understand that though, obvious as it is.
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I wish I had mod points.
To see this, all you have to do is go to a fast food restaurant where they have a clock showing the average time it takes to deliver people's orders to them. Often, these places (like Mc/Donald's) have a board that shows you when *your* order is ready. Guess what, it's going to say your order is ready *way* before it actually is. Why is that? Employees want their times to look good, so they're going to hit the "done" button before they are actually "done."
Making the measurement into
Re:100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:5, Insightful)
& please continue with a multitude of other post-hoc rationalisations as to why we should work like slaves for little material reward because god, & that living healthy, rewarding, comfortable lives is morally wrong; Think of the starving children! Why aren't you working harder?!
Before you respond, please make sure you understand Poe's law & be aware that only a lunatic would write the above sincerely. If you find yourself agreeing with any of it, please see psychological help immediately.
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Although I am skeptical of the promises made by 4-day-week advocates, your approach is exactly the kind of attitude that makes people waste time. If everything is always by the numbers, "Did you finish your 75 calls today?" then people will do exactly that and no more. Crack the whip and ask for 85 calls, you're going to see people quitting. Who on earth wants to work on a treadmill? No, we are human. We need breaks, chatter, and positive reinforcement. Force people's noses to the grindstone, and you'll get neither more work, nor better work, out of people.
But this trial proves the opposite. They got the same 75 calls done in 80% of the time they required before, and they are saying the employees are happier too. How else can you interpret it?
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As they say, correlation is not causation. My guess i that the study failed to control for other, more important factors. For example, people who are treated well tend to be more productive. Perhaps the study participants felt they were being treated better because of the four-day week, and became more productive. I'm sure the bosses were *constantly* reminding them of how good they had it. But if that is the reason, there are ways besides shrinking the work week, to make employees feel better about their j
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As they say, correlation is not causation. My guess i that the study failed to control for other, more important factors. For example, people who are treated well tend to be more productive. Perhaps the study participants felt they were being treated better because of the four-day week, and became more productive. I'm sure the bosses were *constantly* reminding them of how good they had it. But if that is the reason, there are ways besides shrinking the work week, to make employees feel better about their jobs. You know, like being flexible when they have to go to a kid's school program or a doctor visit, and not treating them like a number. If it's the "feel-good" aspect, a company with a five-day week will be more productive than a company with a four-day week, if both treat employees well.
I get that there are a lot of variables and this is a huge oversimplification. Maybe if people know they don't have to come in Friday if they get everything done by Thursday they are motivates to work harder. But the manager way of looking at that could be we expect you to get this done in 4 days and that's what we pay for. It may not be motivational but lots of people do jobs for the paycheck.
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100+ years ago, a 7-day work week was common. "Good" businesses gave people one day off per week. Then Henry Ford came along and popularized the five-day work week, as a way to encourage people to take road trips in the cars he sold them. https://firmspace.com/theprowo... [firmspace.com] Everybody thought it was fantastic...until a five day work week became normal.
The same will happen to a 4-day work week. People will think it's great, until it becomes normal, and then the same old grumpiness will set in.
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100+ years ago, a 7-day work week was common. "Good" businesses gave people one day off per week. Then Henry Ford came along and popularized the five-day work week, as a way to encourage people to take road trips in the cars he sold them. https://firmspace.com/theprowo... [firmspace.com] Everybody thought it was fantastic...until a five day work week became normal.
The same will happen to a 4-day work week. People will think it's great, until it becomes normal, and then the same old grumpiness will set in.
That would be the logical conclusion. If four days is good, three would be better, and so on.
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Re:100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:4, Informative)
Found the shitty manager.
Re:100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems you did not learn the same lessons as the slave traders back in the day. If you are running at 80% you are doing good.
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What's more to the point is that people who typically work 50 or more hours per week tend to die much younger, often before or soon after retirement. Is that the kind of world we want to live in? 32 hours per week sounds like a good & reasonable situation to aim for. Why not strive to make the world a better, fairer place for everyone?
Differential thingydingy. This is definitely a minority opinion. I think we need to differentiate between people who are doing a lot of work time just to survive, versus kooks like me who are driven. I'm happy to put in as much time as I feel like as needed to get the project finished. And a lot of my peers are pretty damn old, and still called in for consultation as needed. Versus someone working 60 hour weeks at the sand mine.
disclaimer - I used my drive to be able to retire at 55. Got called back int
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However, for many people retirement at any age is just a dream. A disturbing number of people end up working till they die, and not because they want to. I have a good pension and some investments, but a lot of people don't have that and can't live on OAS/CPP (Canadian equivalent of Social Securit
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This is ridiculous, no one works at 100% capacity, and likely neither at 80% capacity.
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Seriously, how stupid can you be? This trial shows that your suggestion is _exactly_ the wrong one. People like you are what holds humanity back.
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Seriously, how stupid can you be? This trial shows that your suggestion is _exactly_ the wrong one. People like you are what holds humanity back.
What is he holding humanity back from? There is work that if we switch to a 32 hour week, will just delay the work finishing a day later for each week it takes.
Example - we have a lot of road work in my village. Right now they have the streets torn up and are laying new gas lines fire hydrants and water lines. early spring to late fall work.
It's a pretty extensive project. The workers work a 40 hour week. If they switched to 32 hours, it will make the work all that much longer.
That's the crux to me. A
Re: 100% of the work in 80% of the time means (Score:2)
Yes it does - thatâ(TM)s precisely the point of the trial, that with a 5 day work week staff spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing. Standing around the coffee machine, sitting in their cubicle staring into existential dread. Clicking around random web pages. âoeChecking their emailâ. Etc. if you cut their work week to 4 days it turns out that they do less of this aimless nonsense, and work *more* because theyâ(TM)re more rested, and more able to keep up with their life.
You ca
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The controversy comes when accountants see this differently, 4 days of work = 4 days of pay. At the moment, with a salary you're not allowed to work elsewhere on the two days off, if you can't work elsewhere then you shouldn't be paid less. IMO.
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That's not entirely true, the 20% could be tied up in life admin that they're now doing on the fifth day of the week, so the four days of at work they're not distracted.
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"If they can do 100% of the work in 80% of the time it means they are only working at 80% capacity."
It's like you people have never read Fred Brooks.
Death of Slashdot via moderation abuse? (Score:2)
Not a great FP, but apparently four "Overrated" mods? You done something to piss 'em off? Maybe if they have nothing positive to contribute in the form of a comment, those moderators shouldn't have the mod points to give?
However I'm more disappointed by the lack of Funny. This is the most active "discussion" of the day and nary a joke to be seen. At least no humor that was moderated to visibility. Insufficient motivation? Or amputation of funny bones? Or departures of the folks who had such?
My fuzzy recolle
Re: I've worked 4x10 hour schedule, sucked (Score:3)
4x10 is only relevant if compared with working 5x10. Being the UK, the people in this study were probably working 4x7.5.
Would be interesting to know whether they also had their annual leave cut by 80%. The legal min. in the UK is 21 days (Iâ(TM)ve never had less than 25), but for many government workers, it can be much higher.
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Annual leave is usually pro-rata, so everyone gets basically 5 weeks regardless of how many hours a week they actually work. Instead of needing to take 5x7.5 hours for a week off, they only need 4x7.5 hours, but it's still a week long holiday.
Actually there is a benefit to working 4 days, you can extend your holiday by an extra day for free if you have 3 consecutive days off.
Re: I've worked 4x10 hour schedule, sucked (Score:2)
This isnâ(TM)t a 4x10 schedule. Itâ(TM)s a 4x8 schedule. Just cutting out a bunch of standing around and stairing aimlessly into the void.
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11 of 24 areas saw improvement, 11 saw NO CHANGE and two got worse.
That's pretty rosy.
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It is. And it indicates rather strongly that this is being done wrong in most settings and that people shaping the workplace have been stupid, ignorant and arrogant. But what else is new? Always the same crap with the human race.
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And it indicates rather strongly that this is being done wrong in most settings
What do you mean by "this" in this context? Working hours?
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Then the claims that private enterprise can home in on the optimal solution are grossly exaggerated.
I can only conclude that people who hold this opinion have never worked for a company, especially not a, large one.
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Unless there is some other reason not to do this
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How about the hundreds of thousands of GBP they saved while still getting the same amount of work done?
That too! They slashed turnover, and reported costs savings on agency staff. There must also be savings/efficiency improvements because turnover is expensive: you need to interview and train people to get them up to speed in the job.
Some of the efficiency improvements might be due to the change: any change often yields a temporary improvement. But even if it reverts to the same level of efficiency: why not
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Why go back to spending hundreds of thousands of GBP on staff turnover?
Spite? That's always an excellent motivation.
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How about the hundreds of thousands of GBP they saved while still getting the same amount of work done?
That too! They slashed turnover, and reported costs savings on agency staff. There must also be savings/efficiency improvements because turnover is expensive: you need to interview and train people to get them up to speed in the job.
Some of the efficiency improvements might be due to the change: any change often yields a temporary improvement. But even if it reverts to the same level of efficiency: why not? The only reason to keep people 5 days a week if 4 works is spite
What is your solution to careers and jobs that do not fit the Office worker paradigm.
That's what I want to hear besides the thougfht that everyone works in an office, that offices have a lot of waste, and therfore it follows that all work has a lot of waste, and non office jobs will acheive the same amount of less work, just as productive.
Because there are a fair number of jobs that don't fit the easy to work with criteria, that people are trying to impose universally that there is no truth other tha
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What do you mean "my solution". I don't live in Cambridge anymore and I never had anything to do with the council.
Thing is they tried it and saved money. What more do you want?
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Right so they managed to find a solution which works, and your proposal outs to replace it with a spite based solution such will lose many of the improvements links reduced turnover simply because you hate the government.
When right wing politicians tell you how bad the government outs, they are literally bragging about being bad at their job. This is one of the few insurances where I'm proratedto take politicians entirely at their word.
Maybe you should to.
The government is necessary whether you consider it
Re: Only 11 of 24 areas saw improvements (Score:2)
Uhhh, you can have 11 metrics better and two worse, or you can have two better and 11 worse. Which will you choose
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Depends on the metrics. If eleven metrics are in the style of "workers report that doing less work increases morale" and the two are "job objectively didn't get done", two outweigh eleven completely.
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Depends on the metrics. If eleven metrics are in the style of "workers report that doing less work increases morale" and the two are "job objectively didn't get done", two outweigh eleven completely.
I'm still waiting for the reports on how this is universal, that all jobs will be just as productive when a day is cut out.
I don't doubt that people in some inefficient office will be really happy for that 20 percent raise. I don't doubt that efficiency will increase. On the short term.
On the long term, will they miss the presumed time they were wasting before? Will they enjoy having to get their work done in 20 percent less time? And how long until that nice raise and extra day off becomes normalize
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That's less than half. Maybe the study isn't as rosy as the headline would suggest.
It's a study that picked jobs that can be fit into 32 hours. Office work that probably has a fair amount of wasted time.
There are jobs that no matter how we try to tweak them, if you produce X amounts of the product in 42 hours, then cut the workweek to 32 hours, you'll lose productivity. by a lot.
1 widget per hour, 40 hour workweek, equals 40 widgets. 1 widget per hour, 32 hour work week equals 32 widgets. Pretty simple math. How to get around that? Hire extra people? Now you have your 40 widgets, bu