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
Dee in London