Analysis of Four-Day Working Week Trial by a New Zealand Financial Services Company Finds Staff Were Happier and 20% More Productive (theguardian.com) 111
AmiMoJo shares a report: The founder of one of the first big companies to switch to a four-day working week has called on others to follow, claiming it has resulted in a 20% increase in productivity, appeared to have helped increase profits and boosted staff wellbeing. Analysis of one of the biggest trials yet of the four-day working week has revealed no fall in output, reduced stress and increased staff engagement, fuelling hopes that a better work-life-balance for millions could be in sight. Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a five-day to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay. Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in the total amount of work done, a study of the trial released on Tuesday has revealed.
The trial was monitored by academics at the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology. Among the Perpetual Guardian staff they found scores given by workers about leadership, stimulation, empowerment and commitment all increased compared with a 2017 survey. Details of an earlier trial showed the biggest increases were in commitment and empowerment. Staff stress levels were down from 45% to 38%. Work-life balance scores increased from 54% to 78%. "This is an idea whose time has come," said Andrew Barnes, Perpetual Guardian's founder and chief executive. "We need to get more companies to give it a go. They will be surprised at the improvement in their company, their staff and in their wider community."
The trial was monitored by academics at the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology. Among the Perpetual Guardian staff they found scores given by workers about leadership, stimulation, empowerment and commitment all increased compared with a 2017 survey. Details of an earlier trial showed the biggest increases were in commitment and empowerment. Staff stress levels were down from 45% to 38%. Work-life balance scores increased from 54% to 78%. "This is an idea whose time has come," said Andrew Barnes, Perpetual Guardian's founder and chief executive. "We need to get more companies to give it a go. They will be surprised at the improvement in their company, their staff and in their wider community."
So who's lying (Score:1)
Knee-jerk reaction is "That can't be true, somebody is lying"
So who'd be lying and to what end?
What is kinda strange is the math... So they say no loss in productivity (as opposed to a gain) and they furthermore talk about a 20% increase in productivity. It can't be both, right? If it was a 20% increase per workday, that would still make the workweek fall short. If it was a 20% increase per workweek, one would assume the title would go something like "Working four days actually gets more shit done!!!!" and
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Less time wasted due to boredom / burnout. Not that difficult to comprehend, koko.
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I'm guessing those that are happier would have either Mon or Friday off, so as to always have a 3x day weekend.
Kinda sucks for those a bit, that they'd have to break their weekends and weekday off to be off Sat-Sun, have to work Mon and Friday and be off Tues or Wed or Thurs.
How do they pick who gets lucky and gets the perpetual LONG weekend set ups?
What happens when a holiday occurs on
Re: So who's lying (Score:2)
In the Netherlands here you're just out of luck if a free day falls in the weekend. In many countries it's like that actually. Sometimes the employers get lucky. Sometimes the employees.
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I've never seen what you're talking about actually happen.
The law in New Zealand is quite clear. If a holiday falls on the weekend, it moves to Monday or Friday (depending).
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I'm in the U.S. and if a holiday happens on the weekend the day off is moved to Friday or Monday.
That's almost certainly the standard if any union is involved and for decent companies even without a union.
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I"m guessing they can't let EVERYONE work only Mon-Thurs.....they have to stagger everyone's week day off, won't they?
I would think having half of workers work Mon-Thu and the other half Tue-Fri, with more meetings on Tue-Thu, would work best in most office environments. For some roles like customer service where having half the staff take off Mon&Fri wouldn't work, they could implement an every other week 3-day weekend rotation. People may get extra PTO whenever their day off lands on a holiday, but otherwise that should be an easy problem to work out.
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You stagger who gets a particular day of the week off, then.... Use that to say, "Oh, the employee that handles that is OFF TODAY, so we'll have to postpone doing anything about that issue. And another person that is key to that project will be off tomorrow, so it could be next week before we can take care of your issue."
Not lying, bad reporter math (Score:2)
The reporter (or a non-technical person) said 20%. They wanted to say it came out to a wash, and they knew it was a 20% reduction, so they thought 20% improvement. (And the wash probably had some fairly large error bars)
Note, I messed up elsewhere in the comments and thought it was a 20% weekly improvement.
Re:So who's lying (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the summary writer meant something along the lines of "even though you'd expect cutting work time by 25% would result in a reduction in productivity, it did not."
The article states that productivity went up 20% and profits also increased.
This isn't really surprising. Lots of research shows that 40 hours a week is maximum sustainable effort, when you're building bombs as fast as you can to avoid being invaded by Nazis (seriously). Intellectual work seems to be less than that.
It's also not surprising that companies aren't "all over this." Management is a highly conservative discipline and people have really weird ideas about work. Yours is currently one of the first listed comments on this story, but I'm sure scrolling down will reveal a lot of people who simply refuse to believe this.
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Management is a highly conservative discipline and people have really weird ideas about work.
I really think it comes down to what management gets or think they get out of it.
I work for a small, owner-managed company who's the typical SMB entrepreneur who thinks that everybody loves the company and gets as much out it as he does. I think this is one part of the explanation.
Another is people in jobs where they're not specifically entrepreneurs, but where there is a real or perceived benefit from making their subordinates work harder. Bonus, promotion, prestige, fill in the blank.
After that are peop
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"I really think it comes down to what management gets or think they get out of it."
Yes. Like I said, people, including management, have weird ideas about work.
Studies have also shown that workaholics are often less productive than more well-balanced people, and are more likely to burn out. Some people need a manager to force them to take a break. Some of those people are managers themselves.
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Shifts are still 8 hours, but you have four per week instead of five. Neither four nor five goes into seven equally.
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We work four ten's at our place.
Forty hours pay.
Three day weekend...
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So who'd be lying and to what end?
"If you tell everyone you are happy, and fudge the numbers to look productive, then you can continue to get an extra day off every week".
You really can't see an incentive to lie?
What is kinda strange is the math... So they say no loss in productivity (as opposed to a gain) and they furthermore talk about a 20% increase in productivity.
The summary says "20% gain in productivity" and "same amount of work gets done". So they are getting 20% more done each day they work, with makes up for the day they don't work.
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From you, that is irony.
Re:So who's lying (Score:4, Interesting)
In the US everything is screwed up... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've done 4x10's - and loved it. And, for an hourly position it would work.
However, for Exempt - you would sign up... then some bozo management type would still expect you to work on your 'day off'.
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Note that the article does not mention the employees working 10 hour days. Presumably they went from 5x8 to 4x8. The fact that you assumed a maintained 40+ hour workweek is telling of the US atitude to work.
If I think about how many hours are wasted in a normal office each day, it's not surprising that the same amount of work or more could be done in 32 hours if employees are motivated to not waste as much time during the day.
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30 hour weeks. They were only working 7.5 hour days (on both sides of the experiment).
Just personal experience (Score:2)
I'm not a 1000 person study; but back when I worked 4 ten hour days instead of 5 8 hour days I used to get a lot more work done. I can confirm this is true from my study of one.
Misread the study... (Score:3)
But this study wasn't about moving around the 40-hour-week (actually 37.5 hour week in NZ due to lunch). It was literally just dropping one day from the schedule, and moving to a 30-hour-week (4x7.5).
And weekly productivity went up 20%. Which, given the 20% reduction in hours, means hourly productivity went up ~50%.
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You should at least RTFA when responding to someone who makes a big deal about it in their username! And in response to your bolded statement, the people were salaried - their pay remained the same even though they only worked 80% as long.
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And weekly productivity went up 20%. Which, given the 20% reduction in hours, means hourly productivity went up ~50%.
No, this is wrong. TFA clearly says that the amount of work done per week stayed the same. Productivity (work/time) went up by 20%. So they got 20% more done during each of the 4 days they worked, which made up for the day off.
The phrase "hourly productivity" makes as little sense as saying "hourly velocity". Productivity is not a lump of production, it is a rate of production.
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Yes, I replied to the wrong spot elsewhere on the thread, but my brain mangled it. And productivity seems to have gone up 25% (the amount required to cancel out a 20% decrease in hours), since the article says the total output remained flat (on a weekly basis).
That said, I maintain there is a difference between weekly and and hourly productivity, just as hourly velocity and weekly velocity makes sense as well. It has to do with duty cycle. If you're going on a long car ride, I imagine your average veloci
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Still doesn't add up.
This is economic journalism, not precision science. Productivity is not something that can be measured accurately anyway. This is all handwavy stuff.
Free flights (Score:3)
Wasn't New Zealand offering free flights to people interested in working there?
Horstman's corollary to Parkinson's Law (Score:2)
Work contracts to fit into the time we give it. [vividmethod.com]
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Back when my father was working, he used to work long days and then bring home tons of work to do every night. On the weekend, his pile was extra large and he'd work on it all weekend. I once questioned this, since he wasn't getting paid any extra for this "overtime." He said "my boss expects this level of output from me." I countered that his boss only expected it because he provided it free of charge. When my bosses tried implying that I should continue working on projects on my own time, I strongly rejec
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This kind of sums things up nicely for the middle manager part...
The Gervais Principle [ribbonfarm.com]
I'm guessing some of my previous jobs (Score:2)
would move to 4 12,5 hour work days ao their expectations of 50 hours a week from salaried workers could continue.
The place before that I was working 60-80 hours in a 6 day work week, but at least I got overtime.
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I'd probably be happy to work 4x12.5 hour days as long as my compensation and PTO make up for it. Three day weekends are great, and I'd rather go full off/full on. So, that would be another 10 weeks PTO a year, so that would be 12+ weeks PTO (in the US). Three months a year and three days a week (4 days when there is a holiday) is better than a few extra hours in the evening. Especially since 12.5 hours have more space in their for breaks than 8 hours do, since so often I have to do nothing while the co
20% increase in productivity on their day off (Score:1)
Good news, but other ways to do this (Score:1)
This is all about treating employees as adults, it's all about trust.
Shock/Horror - when you entrust employees they respond favourably, who would've thought? /s
The other ways to accomplish work/home life balance is to allow working from home where feasible, with no limits at all.
If someone wants to work from home for two weeks straight and they are still accomplishing the tasks they have been assigned, or the tasks they have assigned themselves, then surely this is a positive?
This is one aspect from science
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The other ways to accomplish work/home life balance is to allow working from home where feasible, with no limits at all.
If someone wants to work from home for two weeks straight and they are still accomplishing the tasks they have been assigned, or the tasks they have assigned themselves, then surely this is a positive?
I struggle working from home for more than a day, two at the most. Why? Because I run out of shit to do.
I'm ridiculously more productive working from home. Comfortable, it's quiet or has good background music going, food, drinks, and bathrooms aren't a long walk away, and nobody can interrupt me until I'm ready to be interrupted. I would definitely be more productive with 3 days at work and 1 day at home vs 5 at work. I'm not sure about 4 days at work vs 5 days. It's so unproductive there that I'm not sure
Depends on the job and company I guess (Score:2)
If you need to staff a phone 5 days a week, going to 4 days makes no financial sense, you're just a warm body we want to keep in the seat as long as possible for the least amount of money.
For people that have a career, where work-life is important this may be of benefit, but then again, you're already salaried and the job market (at least right now) is wide open. I understand the stress, but people have to get more used to asking what THEY want out of a job.
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If you need to staff a phone 5 days a week, going to 4 days makes no financial sense, you're just a warm body we want to keep in the seat as long as possible for the least amount of money.
In staffing requirements like this, not everybody has the same 4 work days.
With my luck, I'd have off Wednesdays. /s
So: does a 3 day week ... (Score:2)
result in another 30% more productivity ? :-)
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No, my guess is that each day you shave off gives you a 20% boost.
I'm going to go to a zero day work week and get a 100% boost in productivity!
Gee, we've only understood this for ninety years (Score:5, Informative)
Ninety years ago, companies were figuring this out [theweek.com].
Nixon ran with it 65 years ago [google.com].
But, what a CRAAZY idea, am I right?
Too much competition (Score:3)
Also, a certain percentage of the populace _is_ able to be productive for extended hours. 40, 50, 60 even 80. Yeah, there aren't a lot of them, but when you're drawing from a pool of over a billion workers you've got plenty.
More than anything else this is why us tech folk can't compete with India. Their middle class is as large as our entire country. It's j
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Well, the economy is much better now than in the 50s. The GDP is about 60 times higher now than it was in 1950. So where is the 4 days week?
How about a 9 day week instead? (Score:2)
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Partyday
Funday
Sunday
Then go back to work again.
Calvinism (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it might be all & well for the staff at that company to be happier, less stressed, healthier, & more productive but what about their souls? If those workers are denied the opportunity & support they need in order to toil relentlessly & arduously so that they can be better people, aren't they being condemned to an afterlife of eternal damnation? God will surely smite this evil company!
P.S. I'm reliably informed (Poe's Law) that humour must be accompanied by a smiley face in case someone thinks I'm an extremist nut-job :)
Yeah, um... (Score:2)
20% of 40 is 8 so basically, the company gets nothing out of this for salaried employees. For hourly employees, the company gets 8 hours of work for free.
Why stop there? (Score:1)
And if they get the same amount of work done in 2 days, then it sounds like the best move would be to fire the 60% of staff who apparently weren't doing anything worthwhile and get the rest working 5 (or maybe 6) days.
It seems to me that you can re-work these statistics any way you like. Draw whatever conclusions suits the current fashio
Not much of a trial (Score:5, Insightful)
The eight-week experiment...
Smaller companies experimenting with the four-day week have found performance has been better in the first few weeks as excitement about the project took hold, before falling slightly.
A 240 person staff is pretty small, and eight weeks (over Christmas no less) isn't enough time to draw any conclusions.
The productivity increase isn't any surprise though. The employees are offered the day off *if* they could get the same amount of work done in a shorter time. Of course people will respond to a reward like that...for a while. Makes you wonder what would happen if people were offered a 20% pay increase for working five days per week but getting 20% more work done.
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Makes you wonder what would happen if people were offered a 20% pay increase for working five days per week but getting 20% more work done.
It would fail miserably. Pay increases have been generally shown to be a terrible work motivator above some bare minimum.
Alternate proposal - do what you want day (Score:2)
This idea is of course really similar to Google's 10% do what you want idea - except it's specific to a day. One day a week, you can work on whatever you want.
Maybe that means you just catch up on professional reading or courses. Maybe it means you work on a side project. Maybe it even means you do regular work that you just really want to move along more.
I feel like having this option or break, would have nearly as much of a benefit for happiness and productivity as just a day off , and additionally giv
Well the gop plan is an 3.9 day 3 10 hour + 1 3.9 (Score:2)
Well the gop plan is an 3.9 day 3 10 hour + 1 3.9 day. So we get an full week but don't have give out any of the Full time worker perks.
Hmm (Score:1)
Hold on they 20% more productive while working 20% less sorhey where 50% more productive the tine rhey actuslly where at work,if this is true (I mght have missed somrhing), this is a rather imoressive result give the emploies a15 percent pay increae ( compared tonwat they got working 5 day week and have a nice boost to your net result. And ohe ea an emploee that just got a 15% income increese and an aditional day off (or 5 shorter work days) ar less lightly to quit so reducesd cost in reqruring + retrainin
More companies? (Score:2)
"We need to get more companies to give it a go."
I'm sure every manufacturing plant would love a 20% reduction in weekly output. True to most financial/economic 'genius' they fail to see how this simply cannot apply to other industries.
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Vote Vermin Supreme. Vote pony party.
Don't worry, everybody will get a pony. There are 200,000 ponies in the USA. A Little genocide might be required to make the numbers work. Brush after every meal. Brush your ponies teeth too. Beware the secret dental police.