More Bosses Give 4-Day Workweek A Try (npr.org) 44
Companies around the world are embracing what might seem like a radical idea: a four-day workweek. From a report: The concept is gaining ground in places as varied as New Zealand and Russia, and it's making inroads among some American companies. Employers are seeing surprising benefits, including higher sales and profits. The idea of a four-day workweek might sound crazy, especially in America, where the number of hours worked has been climbing and where cellphones and email remind us of our jobs 24/7. But in some places, the four-day concept is taking off like a viral meme. Many employers aren't just moving to 10-hour shifts, four days a week, as companies like Shake Shack are doing; they're going to a 32-hour week -- without cutting pay. In exchange, employers are asking their workers to get their jobs done in a compressed amount of time.
Last month, a Washington state senator introduced a bill to reduce the standard workweek to 32 hours. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is backing a parliamentary proposal to shift to a four-day week. Politicians in Britain and Finland are considering something similar. In the U.S., Shake Shack started testing the idea a year and a half ago. The burger chain shortened managers' workweeks to four days at some stores and found that recruitment spiked, especially among women. Shake Shack's president, Tara Comonte, says the staff loved the perk: "Being able to take their kids to school a day a week, or one day less of having to pay for day care, for example." So the company recently expanded its trial to a third of its 164 U.S. stores. Offering that benefit required Shake Shack to find time savings elsewhere, so it switched to computer software to track supplies of ground beef, for example.
Last month, a Washington state senator introduced a bill to reduce the standard workweek to 32 hours. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is backing a parliamentary proposal to shift to a four-day week. Politicians in Britain and Finland are considering something similar. In the U.S., Shake Shack started testing the idea a year and a half ago. The burger chain shortened managers' workweeks to four days at some stores and found that recruitment spiked, especially among women. Shake Shack's president, Tara Comonte, says the staff loved the perk: "Being able to take their kids to school a day a week, or one day less of having to pay for day care, for example." So the company recently expanded its trial to a third of its 164 U.S. stores. Offering that benefit required Shake Shack to find time savings elsewhere, so it switched to computer software to track supplies of ground beef, for example.
Sign me up! (Score:2)
Re:Sign me up! (Score:5, Interesting)
Listened to interview on NPR this morning, they said the most important thing was to eliminate distraction and allow people to think deeply while working
They eliminated OPEN OFFICES, which I have felt to be complete crap and a waste of time
This is currently happening outside of US, hopefully somebody is listening
Re:Sign me up! (Score:5, Insightful)
They eliminated OPEN OFFICES, which I have felt to be complete crap and a waste of time
I have worked from home (and on a plane) for years but man people really were mistaken to mock cubicles. Cubicles are way better than the open office concept. I think people were hoping it would get better and instead it got much worse.
Re:Sign me up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Closed door office > Cubicle >> Open Office
Our office moved locations and the cubes shrank 30%, the cube walls got shorter (stand up desk users are now line of sight for noise), and the noise level has really taken a mental toll when doing a job that requires deep focus for long stretches of time. The wall between us and marketing was not properly sound proofed, so we get to listen to their conference calls through the wall.
Then we interviewed a grad student today for an intern position, and he apologized for taking a minute to get to his office to have a quiet place to talk. God damned grad students get better work environments than I do. WTF?!
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My office is 8x10 feet. My company pays $2/sqft for rent. So that is $160 month, or ~$2000 annually. A cubicle is 6x6, or about ~$900 in rent annually.
For a typical burdened cost of $100k/employee, offices easily pay for themselves if it makes employees even 1% more productive.
Also, walled offices make it easier to recruit good employees in the first place. I spent many years in a cubicle and will never go back.
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The problem is different people have different needs within a company, and when you go all office it can be a challenge to properly address those differences.
At $2/SF, sure, it is easy. At $4/SF things get more complicated, especially as you add in construction cost (including HVAC), circulation space, vacant workstations, lease duration, and flexibility for reconfiguring when needs change.
A workstation or cube is about $2k all-in. A private office is about $6-10k. For a 3 or 5-year lease it starts to ad
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Does this happen with a cube farm? I've maybe seen it once where a cube far was reconfigured and it was so disrupting it only happened by everyone in the cube farm moving elsewhere to new locations and putting new guys in the new cube farms. I think for most offices, short of a renovation, even the cubes don't get reconfigured as it's highly disruptive and requires a lot of work anyhow since you often have to re-run new power and network cabling.
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Re:Sign me up! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at casinos blackjack dealers, they get a 20 minute break for every 60 minutes they spend dealing, in order to make sure they don't get fatigued and make mistakes. That diminishing returns for long periods of work likely extends to other white-collar professions, so companies aren't getting their money's worth when they institute long work hours.
http://gaminglabor.blogspot.co... [blogspot.com]
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I think this is interesting, thanks for sharing it. My opinion for what it's worth is that we should actually work 5 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week. After 5 hours of concentration I'm done being productive and everybody I've spoken to about this tells me the same thing. I think the whole 4 day a week thing gives people a nice complete break from work every week, but they come back not remembering what they were doing when they left. Better vacation regulations should be for giving people more time to c
Re: Sign me up! (Score:2)
It doesnâ(TM)t make sense to work 6x5 if your commute is an hour each way, itâ(TM)s much better to do 10x3 in that scenario. There are other work-related externalities besides commuting, too, and Iâ(TM)d rather incur those costs less frequently.
Plus then, it becomes much more possible to live where you really want to live.
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Depends on the work to justify it... (Score:2)
Really surprised that shallow FP hasn't been modded up. I can't resist taking the obvious swing at the "Why?"
How much of the work we do is actually necessary these days? If you define essential work in terms of food, clothing, and shelter, the last numbers I read were around 20%. Think about it for a minute. What are the rest of us being paid for?
My ontology divides it into essential, investment, and recreation. If it's just a matter of keeping things going, then 80% of the current work isn't needed. If you
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How much of the work we do is actually necessary these days? If you define essential work in terms of food, clothing, and shelter, the last numbers I read were around 20%. Think about it for a minute. What are the rest of us being paid for?
We get paid according to supply and demand. The question is how much money I need, like the bare minimum would be something like a WoW addict - a micro apartment with a computer, bed and microwave. If you don't care where it is - because you're not going out anyway, except to pick up groceries - how low could you go? I'd say pretty ridiculously low, unless you run into health problems but talking a daily walk/run is free apart from the cost of some shoes. I don't want that life though. Most of us don't. We
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I support financials systems for a research non profit
If you want to see many of those promises of genetic testing/treatment/engineering to come true, then the company that I work for is essential. If they want to pay their bills, track grants, keep employees, etc... then I am essential to them
I could certainly make more money at a for profit company, or in consulting, but I like being close to where the action is happening
You could probably categorize it under investment
None that I had (Score:1)
So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
In few years, people will complain about work 4 days a week, and will start to test 3, with equal initial benefits.
Considering the 40 hour work week was codified into law about 80 years ago, I see no reason to believe our culture would transition to a three day work week shortly after it transitions to a four day work week. Although I could see a 4 day 6 hour work week catching on considering research is quite clear that 8 hours is too long for knowledge workers to stay engaged.
While I am a proponent of a basic income, I think a shortened work week (without reduced pay) is an even better way to distribute our world's economic gains more evenly. Done together it could help mitigate the negative aspects of either approach.
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Considering the 40 hour work week was codified into law about 80 years ago, I see no reason to believe our culture would transition to a three day work week shortly after it transitions to a four day work week.
Still a little unclear why anyone but my boss and I have a say in this negotiation.
Re: So... (Score:2)
Re: So... (Score:3)
Simple - because your boss has a much stronger bargaining position than you. That is true across the board. This, itâ(TM)s in our interests to get together, and say as a group that weâ(TM)re going to bargain for at least a particular minimum deal, so that the bossâ(TM) bargaining position is weakened.
Weâ(TM)ll call this grouping of individuals to bargain together a âoegovernmentâ, and periodically have votes to determine how best to represent our collective interests.
Welcome
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That is indeed one way to look at government. In the US however, people (rightfully) see government as adversarial and oppressive and the same with their employer and any group that tries to impose their will upon the individual.
In the US, there is choices for employment and you can negotiate your wages (unlike Europe and other places where salary bands are set by law or nationwide collective agreements). It's unlikely your boss has a very strong bargaining power, especially if the economy is doing well and
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A shorter workweek without reduced pay is not going to distribute anything.
Do you think that companies would then hire more people to make up the difference? That money just isn't there for the vast majority of companies, unless you're only thinking about giant corporations, and they just don't care.
I do support the idea. I'm just saying it's not going to provide better wealth distribution.
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The point is that for many works there is actually no significant difference to make up even if people work 1 day less per week.
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A century, more or less, later w
More Bosses Give 4-Day Workweek A Try (Score:3)
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M'kay... I'm going to need you to come in, ah... , on Sahturday....
Working days or working hours (Score:2)
Climbing? (Score:2, Informative)
Haven't looked at history as much as you should have, I see. Average length of workweek has stalled for decades at 40 hours, but it got to 40 hours after falling from 55-70 hours, depending on what sort of job you had....
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For salaried employees, the *average* workweek is 47 hours:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1... [gallup.com]
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Maybe in the USA but not EU or Australia.
USA seems to have a culture of hours worked rather than productivity.
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Maybe in the USA but not EU or Australia. USA seems to have a culture of hours worked rather than productivity.
Well, it can make a difference if your bosses prioritize you being physically present vs you being productive...and if they favor the first, if they want you looking productive during downtime even if you've run out of tasks currently needing addressing. In some ways, if you're hourly, the best arrangement is "Be here, but if you're out of tasks to do then just do something while waiting for the next batch to come in." (I got paid a few days ago to spend several hours just reading a book, because I needed
Shake Shack ... ground beef? (Score:1)
Offering that benefit required Shake Shack to find time savings elsewhere, so it switched to computer software to track supplies of ground beef, for example.
Their hamburger shake is yummy.
Different managers in the same company (Score:2)
I had completely different expectations of my performance as a salaried employee.
One manager said, it doesn't matter how many hours you work, as long as you get your work done, some people will do the same amount of work in 30 hours as others do in 60 hours.
Another manager expected us to be at work for a minimum of 50 hours a week.
I figured out, for every 4 employees, you got the time equivalent of 5. Not the production, or experience, but some metric they were tracking for management performance evaluation
Way to save money? (Score:2)
Uhh...what was Shake Shack using to track their ground beef before? An abacus?
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Uhh...what was Shake Shack using to track their ground beef before? An abacus?
No kidding. Lots of places are replacing those workers outright with robots and kiosks, and they are just learning to use computers?
The Washington Bill (Score:2)
Yeah, no chance of passing and without reading it I can say that I am safely excluded from it's provisions.
If you merely cut hours from someone who is working 40 they will get less pay. For the hourly workers this isn't a benefit.
For me, like most high paid positions, my work is measured in results. You can't say that for most Americans and I don't even consider hours.
If I were just completing tasks I would be finished with my week on a Tuesday, but the problem is everyone else needs something. It might be
4 days + WFH pls. (Score:2)
That would be rad. Oh, & hire me pls. :P
So 20% of their time is wasted. Sounds low... (Score:2)
Hell, take worktime down to three days a week and you can run a double shift - MTuW and ThFSa. I'd bet the productivity would still go up. If you get rid of unnecessary meetings, you could probably get it down to two days a week and run three shifts.
Sounds like a poorly run company. (Score:2)
The two seem unrelated. This suggests that the company is poorly managed. Why hadn't someone noticed, independent of a four day work week being introduced, that they were wasting money because they weren't using software to track ground beef supplies? It's not like "software" and "computers" are a novel concept or that other companies haven't been using
Meh (Score:1)
Does it persist? (Score:2)
So, does going to a 4-day week produce long-term improvements, or does it return to prior levels after a couple of months?