Nearly 1,000 Britons Will Keep Four-Day Work Week After Trial (theguardian.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Nearly 1,000 British workers will keep a shorter working week after the latest trial of a four-day week and similar changes to traditional working patterns. All 17 British businesses in a six-month trial of the four-day week said they would continue with an arrangement consisting of either four days a week or nine days a fortnight. All the employees remained on their full salary. The trial was organized by the 4 Day Week Foundation, a group campaigning for more businesses to take up shorter working weeks.
The latest test follows a larger six-month pilot in 2022, involving almost 3,000 employees, which ended in 56 of 61 companies cutting down their hours from a five-day working week. [...] Researchers at Boston College, a US university, said the findings from the latest trial were "extremely positive" for workers. They found that 62% of workers reported that they experienced less burnout during the trial, according to a poll of 89 people. Forty-five percent of those polled said they felt "more satisfied with life."
The 4 Day Week Foundation has run successive trials to gather data and demonstrate how companies can make the switch. In January, the foundation said more than 5,000 people from a previous wave had started the year permanently working a four-day week. Companies involved in the latest trial, which started in November, included charities and professional services firms, with the number of employees at each employer ranging between five and 400. They included the British Society for Immunology and Crate Brewery in Hackney, east London. [...] The small web software company BrandPipe said that the latest trial had been a success for the business, coinciding with increased sales. Geoff Slaughter, BrandPipe's chief executive, said: "The trial's been an overwhelming success because it has been the launchpad for us to consider what constitutes efficiency, and financial performance is double what it was before."
Slaughter added: "If we're going to see it rolled out more substantially across different sectors, there should be incentives for early adopters, because we're creating the blueprint for the future."
The latest test follows a larger six-month pilot in 2022, involving almost 3,000 employees, which ended in 56 of 61 companies cutting down their hours from a five-day working week. [...] Researchers at Boston College, a US university, said the findings from the latest trial were "extremely positive" for workers. They found that 62% of workers reported that they experienced less burnout during the trial, according to a poll of 89 people. Forty-five percent of those polled said they felt "more satisfied with life."
The 4 Day Week Foundation has run successive trials to gather data and demonstrate how companies can make the switch. In January, the foundation said more than 5,000 people from a previous wave had started the year permanently working a four-day week. Companies involved in the latest trial, which started in November, included charities and professional services firms, with the number of employees at each employer ranging between five and 400. They included the British Society for Immunology and Crate Brewery in Hackney, east London. [...] The small web software company BrandPipe said that the latest trial had been a success for the business, coinciding with increased sales. Geoff Slaughter, BrandPipe's chief executive, said: "The trial's been an overwhelming success because it has been the launchpad for us to consider what constitutes efficiency, and financial performance is double what it was before."
Slaughter added: "If we're going to see it rolled out more substantially across different sectors, there should be incentives for early adopters, because we're creating the blueprint for the future."
Meanwhile here in America (Score:2)
Re: Meanwhile here in America (Score:2)
You should. After all, Israelis depend on you for socialized health care and weapons. Lots of weapons. They're a lot like you: making friends all over the world!
Re: Meanwhile here in America (Score:1)
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Re: Meanwhile here in America (Score:2)
Is anything false in my post? Maybe you can tear yourself away from piloting drones into children long enough to verify that?
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And get a lot less vacation days.
Guess what (Score:2)
Guess what:
Fewer workdays won't change that.
Re:Guess what (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation?
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But it DID. Better performance is a real and measurable result.
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Human beings are not machines, they do not produce a constant stream of output while they are working. Outside of simple manual jobs, at least. They get tired, they have lives outside the office, stress and overworking make them sick.
Turns out that 5 days a week is less efficient than 4 days a week for most people, i.e. they can get the same amount of work done in fewer hours if the duty cycle is reduced. It's a win-win - the employee has more free time and better quality of life, the employer loses nothing
WHAT ABOUT THE HOURS PER WEEK? (Score:2)
These stories on the supposedly shortened British working week are never specific as to whether they're working less hours per week for the same pay. If hours per week are the same, then the only thing workers may be gaining is some scheduling flexibility.
Today's workers should be down to about a 30-hour work week based on productivity improvements since the '70s. Either that or about 40% more pay.
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Finally found some info https://www.theguardian.com/mo... [theguardian.com]
At the Royal Society of Biology, in London, its 38 employees now take either a Monday or a Friday off, and the working day has been extended from seven hours to eight
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Move to At Will Employment (Score:2)
The issue is not having at-will employment. Most of the US has at-will employment, meaning you can be fired for any reason at any time. In general that means that a company has a very bad reputation if they abuse this and it'll be difficult to hire, but if you want qualified talent you have to make your workplace an attractive place to work. Not so in the UK. While in theory you
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In 2003, I was asked to accept a transfer of an OLD guy who was a mainframe COBOL programmer because his unit didn't need him anymore. I was skeptical, but was willing to do the favour to my boss. My unit was UNIX, JAVA and PERL and a few other things at the time, as far away from COBOL mainframe batch processing as you could get.
I started this guy off SIMPLE. Basic PERL scripting. He just couldn't get it!!!! He got all the help in the world and we all may as well have been talking to a wall. It was ridicu
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Blue collar vs white collar (Score:1)
Blue collar work you get paid to show up.
White collar work you get paid to produce a result.
If you produce said result with your ass parked in an office chair on Wednesday afternoon or thinking about it while cutting the grass on Saturday morning, it still counts.
The con here is asserting that this will work for blue collar work, which by definition is commodotized labor whose value is defined by process rather than by outcome.
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That depends on the work. For maintenance, you don't care if he labors like a madman for hours a day, or if he reads a magazine all day, then takes out his wand and says "REPAIRO" with a flourish. So long as shit works.