Here's the link to the full PDF of the study results. If you can't be bothered to read it (it's long and a little dense), follow me as I'll be talking about highlights and lessons learned for DAYS! WEEKS!
@jilleduffy this is a great report - though I just read all of it and couldn't really find the answers to the questions I had.
for organisations that have to provide a 24*7*365 service, i.e. companies with on-call rotations and who provide constant support or responsiveness - were the 4-day weeks successful for those? what was the impact to salary (because reduction in hours implies having to have more staff to cover the on-calls or that there is simply more unpaid time or unacknowledged time)?
the argument used by most tech orgs is a dual one about opportunity costs (what could we have done but didn't?) and about costs (if we reduce hours the base load of a role still exist and now we have to hire more people so the salary needs to go down to cover the new people). I agree with the report that the first argument isn't terribly strong, but the second argument doesn't have clear data broken out that tells any compelling story there (explicit data rather than implicit data).
for the non-24*7*365 roles, a 4-day week looks great - but I also struggle to see how it would work for something like nurses on an A&E hospital ward.
@dee There was a note that there was no decrease in pay as a result of working fewer hours. Pay/salaries stayed the same.
There were retail businesses included, and for them I *believe* the 4-day work week would have been staggered for employees, just as it would be for a business that operates 24/7. So, it's not like "no one works Fri, Sat, Sun" but each employee only works 4 days per week.
@jilleduffy Some engineering companies operate on a 10/80 work week. Most of Houston seemed to be setup like that.
Essentially you have Schedule-A and Schedule-B with you staggering Fridays off. If memory serves it was actually brought in originally to try and save money on realestate space and costs of humans. (Parking downtown, A/C, support groups, etc.)
The system was absolutely superior to a 'traditional' 5day work week. I honestly can't come up with a genuine detraction to the idea.
It's telling that businesses are beginning to roll out "quiet days" (No scheduled meetings, management to encourage professional growth) to give people room to actually do their work.
Back in 2014, was working for a customer that moved me and their other engineers from cubes to an "open plan" space. Claimed it would increase cooperation and knowledge sharing. It quickly lead to everyone getting noise cancelling earphones and, ultimately, people like me leaving.
But what about company culture???
What about spontaneous creativity in the hallways/break room/etc ?
An expected feature of totalitarian commerce.
@jilleduffy And they cannot articulate why they don't want a 4-day work week — or at least the reasons they offer are contradicted by experience.
Stupidity is stubborn; that's why it persists.
@jilleduffy it doesn't make any sense
it's even show that 4-day workweeks make the employees more productive
they could be producing more profit and even save money...
capitalists are now bad even at exploiting?
@jilleduffy See also data on open plan offices vs small group offices (just a few people per enclosed office) or individual offices.
(people in small enclosed group offices and individual offices have *better* collaboration than open plan because you can talk to people without interrupting an entire room, so you do; they also have significantly less sick day usage, even even before COVID was a thing)
@jilleduffy
Qp "It’s amazing how business want to run on data, but when presented with the successfulness of a 4-day work week, that’s not the data they want"
A croire que tous ces managers ne veulent pas être chez eux à s'occuper de leur famille 😈
@jilleduffy Part of the reason is that the workforce being constantly exhausted and stressed is “good” for the economy because people spend money on treats for themselves, pre-prepared meals etc.
I don’t think that will work any more because profits are spiralling while wages are effectively reduced. Companies soon will ask why their profits are falling, sif wages don’t relate to capacity to spend.
@toychicken So, a few years ago I wrote this article that was based on studies of factory workers during WWI.
We see many of the same outcomes: Putting in more hours does not result in higher output, after a threshold is hit https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190912-what-wartime-munitionettes-can-teach-us-about-burnout
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