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Four-day Week 'an Overwhelming Success' in Iceland (bbc.com) 145

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success" and led to many workers moving to shorter hours, researchers have said. AmiMoJo writes: The trials, in which workers were paid the same amount for shorter hours, took place between 2015 and 2019. Productivity remained the same or improved in the majority of workplaces, researchers said. A number of other trials are now being run across the world, including in Spain and by Unilever in New Zealand. In Iceland, the trials run by Reykjavik City Council and the national government eventually included more than 2,500 workers, which amounts to about 1% of Iceland's working population. A range of workplaces took part, including preschools, offices, social service providers, and hospitals. Many of them moved from a 40 hour week to a 35 or 36 hour week, researchers from UK think tank Autonomy and the Association for Sustainable Democracy (Alda) in Iceland said.

The trials led unions to renegotiate working patterns, and now 86% of Iceland's workforce have either moved to shorter hours for the same pay, or will gain the right to, the researchers said. Workers reported feeling less stressed and at risk of burnout, and said their health and work-life balance had improved. They also reported having more time to spend with their families, do hobbies and complete household chores.Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy, said: "This study shows that the world's largest ever trial of a shorter working week in the public sector was by all measures an overwhelming success.
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Four-day Week 'an Overwhelming Success' in Iceland

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  • The comments on this will be fantastic. One group saying this is the way forward, and the other saying that it will destroy businesses. Fire out he flame war boys.
    (I, for one, would love a 4 day work week, but know it will never happen.)
    • Commercially, I already have a four day work week. In practice, I have a five day work week as I have a voluntary job on Saturday..

    • It could mean more people employed to cover those round-the-clock businesses. e.g. hospital, etc. For those that have a smaller work-week it could translate into less of a commute, and hence less demand on the transportation network.

    • Not in the USA (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bussdriver ( 620565 )

      It took strong unions, people DYING, women voting, a free-market created great depression & dust bowl (formerly the largest environmental disaster,) a surge in (actual real) communism (as a contrast,) the functional death of the Republicans, 2 weekly religious activities, and world-saving super-man, FDR, to finally create the 5 day work week only began 100 years ago and formalized during the start of WW2 of all times.

      We do not have a religious holiday on any other day of the week for a major religion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        It took strong unions, people DYING, women voting, a free-market created great depression & dust bowl (formerly the largest environmental disaster,) a surge in (actual real) communism (as a contrast,) the functional death of the Republicans, 2 weekly religious activities, and world-saving super-man, FDR, to finally create the 5 day work week only began 100 years ago and formalized during the start of WW2 of all times.

        Unless you're talking about the FLSA, specifically, you're off by about fifteen years [history.com]... I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Henry Ford's action in 1926 had little, if anything, to do with unions or communism, and nothing at all to do with Franklin Roosevelt, world war 2, or the dust bowl.

        On May 1, 1926, Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford’s office workers the following August.

        Henry Ford’s Detroit-based automobile company had broken ground in its labor policies before. In early 1914, against a backdrop of widespread unemployment and increasing labor unrest, Ford announced that it would pay its male factory workers a minimum wage of $5 per eight-hour day, upped from a previous rate of $2.34 for nine hours (the policy was adopted for female workers in 1916). The news shocked many in the industry—at the time, $5 per day was nearly double what the average auto worker made—but turned out to be a stroke of brilliance, immediately boosting productivity along the assembly line and building a sense of company loyalty and pride among Ford’s workers.

    • Nah, for the most part employers care about hours. I hate to disappoint you but I'm not saying either one. Personally, I'd love it because 40 hours is just as easy to put in on 4x10 than 5x8. The only people who'd have a hard time with it are folks who are the only ones with their job duties at their particular place of employment. If those duties need to be done during business hours five days a week, they don't have a shift-mate to share with. That'd be a problem.

    • The right answer that solves both concerns is that governments should not set work hours, but employers and employees should work together to find the right balance between time and productivity. It is in both their interests, but there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution in every case.

      I would be most productive if I could scale my hours up or down as needed to fit the actual work I'm given. I suspect that is true of most knowledge workers. But, instead, I'm asked to sit in a chair until a certain time wh

      • Interesting points. But the idea of negotiating with the employer is really only valid when their is some power parity in the relationship. As a valued knowledge worker, intimately familiar with your employer's product you probably have some of that power. As a minimum wage worker doing a routine job that everyone can, you probably don't.

        I get where you are coming from - I'm going to guess it is similar to many people that post on slashdot - knowledge workers who due to skills and corporate knowledge do h

  • This is just theory, but I think shortening the work-week probably is boosted by the fact that people are more productive if at least some of the time they spend working is not overlapped by other people.

    The reason for this would be, with fewer people working the same times or days you are, there are less interruptions and you can focus more on work.

    There exists the potential for delays if someone knows something crucial, but in reality anything truly important you could get a response from someone quickly

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Same here. Most productive on 20-25 hra a week, on 3-4 days. If I have to, I'll grudgingly stretch that same 10 productivity points to 30 hours.

        Anything beyond that and I'll actually drop long term productivity to 7-8 points, or even 5 if I have to go above 40.

        Reasons vary, but for one, my life also needs some degree of mangement and energy. If I don't have enough of that, I'll fall behind on that front and/or invest more than I'd like, and I'll be less rested. I'll also start hating my job for the fact tha

    • This is one of several reasons why many workers would produce more, not less, if they were allowed to regulate their own hours within reason.

      Additional reasons just off the top of my head: being able to adjust commutes based on when they'd be the quickest; being able to be a genuine part of their families' lives; being able to do non-work things during slow times so they could focus more on work during busier ones; being free to learn and update their skills; being able to do continuous improvement; not bei

  • wait (Score:3)

    by hamburger lady ( 218108 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @11:43AM (#61555599)

    so they're throwing thursday through saturday out?

    oh, 4 day work week.

  • Get workers to work (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @11:50AM (#61555623) Homepage Journal
    The fourth hour work week. Weekends, and the like, were needed to get people to work, decrease unemployment, and get the economy moving. This forced some of the benefits of automation, assembly lines, and the like to be given to the worker. So people felt like they worked to elevate themselves, not just to eat. It has been a long time since we have had to work just not to starve, which was the basis of society until the turn of the 20th century

    Four 7 hour days or five 6 hour days will encourage many people to work. It will return some benefits of automation to the worker. Just in time scheduling of employees clearly indicates that this will cause no burden to employers.

  • This makes sense to me too, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:04PM (#61555663) Journal

    I'd also say any determinations of postive vs. negative productivity impact really need more time....

    I can see how initially, workers would be happy enough about this change so they'd be motivated to put forth more effort to try to help validate it as a successful concept. (You wouldn't want it to be taken away from you again if they conclude it caused reduced productivity.) I can also imagine some bosses out there "reminding" their employees of that need to look as productive as possible to ensure the idea is kept.

    Real proof it worked probably needs more time to re-visit, after people become comfortable with it as a new norm.

    • The big missing piece from this is, of course, how the customers/public impacted by the change feel.

      These were government employees in the trial. I know that personally, it's already extremely difficult to get in touch with members of the local government and any kind of interaction (permit, etc) can take weeks or months to resolve. Many offices already only have 9-4 or 10-4 office hours. If they were able to work even less than they already do I can't imagine how much slower they would be.

    • Re:This makes sense to me too, but ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @01:08PM (#61555957)
      This is a well-known phenomenon [wikipedia.org].

      Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. However, it is said that this is the natural process of the human being adapting to the environment, without knowing the objective of the experiment occurring. Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought that they were being monitored individually.

      There's more that you can read on the wiki (including a negative version, when the workers became convinced the study was going to be used to justify lowering their pay, so productivity dropped). To really pull off a study like this you need to do it as a double-blind experiment, where the subjects don't know they're being treated differently. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to hide a shorter workweek from test subjects. You'd have to do something like make them live in a cave cut off from the outside world with no clocks, and test productivity while varying number of hours worked per week. Or trick the workers by saying the experiment succeeded and switch the company to a shorter workweek, operate that way for a year or so, then compare to another similar company where you told the workers the experiment failed and they stayed at a 5 day workweek.

      Personally, I suspect this is something which is different for each person. That is, everyone has a different number of hours worked in a week which results in maximizing their productivity. And trying to make everyone work the same number of hours in itself creates an inefficiency.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Nugoo ( 1794744 )
        How long does this effect last? This CBC article [www.cbc.ca] says they tried it for 4 years.

        Personally, I suspect this is something which is different for each person. That is, everyone has a different number of hours worked in a week which results in maximizing their productivity. And trying to make everyone work the same number of hours in itself creates an inefficiency.

        I agree with this completely. However, I know that, in my case, the number of hours I want to work, and the number of hours that would make me most productive are very different values.

      • Would this hold long term though, like in this experiment?

    • I'd also say any determinations of postive vs. negative productivity impact really need more time....

      I can see how initially, workers would be happy enough about this change so they'd be motivated to put forth more effort to try to help validate it as a successful concept. (You wouldn't want it to be taken away from you again if they conclude it caused reduced productivity.) I can also imagine some bosses out there "reminding" their employees of that need to look as productive as possible to ensure the idea is kept.

      Real proof it worked probably needs more time to re-visit, after people become comfortable with it as a new norm.

      Agreed, the initial results look to be about as promising as one could expect, but initial results don't always hold in the long term.

  • I still remember managers saying (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:08PM (#61555683)

    We expect 50+ hours from our salaried employees, which meant basically we were going to be paying 4 people to do 5 peoples work.

    After enough layoffs, and "downsizing" I was doing about three or more peoples work. I did it smart, not hard.

    The more joy I felt was a daily crap during which I would read ebooks in the toilet, until my legs would go numb (and the sensors for the lights would cut out a time or two)

    TLDR: getting paid to take a dump is one of the joys of employment.

    • Not sure why this is modded "funny." I'm having a similar experience here. I've replaced close to a dozen people who've left over time, generally by automating what they used to do by hand. (A lot of them, not all but a lot, did just the minimum to keep their jobs. I believe in doing the best job I can, and adding the most value for my employer that I can. I only wish that were rewarded by more than my own satisfaction over a job well done....) And while I rarely have time to read e-books, our bathroo

      • Not sure why this is modded "funny." I'm having a similar experience here. I've replaced close to a dozen people who've left over time, generally by automating what they used to do by hand. (A lot of them, not all but a lot, did just the minimum to keep their jobs. I believe in doing the best job I can, and adding the most value for my employer that I can. I only wish that were rewarded by more than my own satisfaction over a job well done....) And while I rarely have time to read e-books, our bathroom lights also shut off after a few minutes of trying to sit on the commode. I wonder if we work in the same place.

        Probably not, I was laid off after 24 years of repeated layoffs and downsizing almost every year, and retired at 52.

        I actually thanked the clueless guy who told me I didn't have a job anymore. I don't think he understood what I meant.

        One of the people I worked with did a tightrope between doing "nothing" and doing "just enough" to not get fired, and was dancing in joy at being laid off with all kinds of benefits.

  • If people want to work four 9-hour days, more power to 'em. So long as they and their bosses are happy with the results, knock yer socks off.

    Today, hourly workers in California must get paid overtime if they work over eight hours in a day. I'd love to see that relaxed. Given how little California legislators seem to value work schedule flexibility, I don't expect that to happen.

    Personally, I'm pretty burned after eight hours. I don't think I'd like it.

    • Re:Yay for them. Not sure I'd like it. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:42PM (#61555821)

      I think it depends on what you're doing. If you're doing anything that requires an intense amount of continual mental focus or physical labor most of the time the longer shifts probably wouldn't be very productive. I think the work most people do isn't that intense though and the decompression one gets from a three day weekend might make up for the longer days.

      I know based off my own experience I am far more refreshed after a 3 day weekend compared to a 2 day one and I even know a couple of folks who work four 10s a week right now and they all say they love it and that's still doing 40 hours a week. Of course who knows how productive they really are after 8 hours but often a happy worker is a productive worker.

  • Aren't weeks in Icleand 7 days any more?

  • The point of longer hours (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:25PM (#61555763)
    is to put negative pressure on wages. Yes, you lose a bit of productivity, but you make it back in spades when your entire workforce is doing 50-60 hours a week, thereby eliminating 20% of your open positions, massively reducing the supply of good paying jobs.

    Supply and demand cuts both ways. In the world of smaller shop keeps Adam Smith envisioned, where you didn't have a handful of CEOs who all sit on each other's Board of Directors this wasn't an issue. But thanks to wealth inequality, market consolidation, Dark Money and anti-democratic laws and structures we have what is effectively a centrally planned economy now. It's Communism without the pretense of caring about the workers.

    • It's worth taking a 20% pay cut for 20 percent fewer hours, because after taxes it's only a 12% pay cut.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        It's worth taking a 20% pay cut for 20 percent fewer hours, because after taxes it's only a 12% pay cut.

        Uh, that's not how percentages work.

      • No, it's still a 20% cut assuming that your tax rate stays the same.

        If you're progressing/degressing, then it depends on the exact amount, but be generally it will be little difference.

        • No, it's still a 20% cut assuming that your tax rate stays the same.

          It doesn't, the 20% comes off the top tax bracket.

          • I'm going to assume you mean US tax brackets: https://www.bankrate.com/finan... [bankrate.com]

            If yes, then calculate again.

            In most cases 20% cut won't change your bracket. And in many cases where it will, the net difference is something around 3-5%.

            • Calculate it. The reason is because you don't pay taxes at all on the lower portions of your earnings. So when you get a pay cut, it's from the higher tax bracket.

              • Fine. For 2021, take a single person making $50,656 per year. They pay $9,950 * 0.10 + $30,575 * 0.12 + $10131 * 0.22 = $7893 in taxes.
                Now they take a 20% pay cut. Now they make $40,525 per year, and pay $9,950 * 0.10 + $30,575 * 0.12 = $4664 in taxes.

                So they took a $10131 pay cut in salary (20%), but actual take home pay decreased from $42,763 to $35861, or $6902 (16%). And this is right at the cutoff between the 12% and 22% tax brackets which would give the most favorable for the employee getting the

  • This report includes input from 4 of the 6 relevant stakeholders.

    - Workers
    - Unions
    - The public sector
    - A think tank
    - Private employers
    - Customers of the affected enterprises

  • A representative 1%? (Score:2, Informative)

    by petes_PoV ( 912422 )

    amounts to about 1% of Iceland's working population

    So a tiny proportion of the working population. One that consists entirely of government officials.

    Even though it was a success - demonstrating that those employees don't have enough productive work to keep them busy - I doubt that it scales well. A brief look reveals that Iceland's main industries (the ones that earn the money that pays for government employees) are as follows:

    aluminium smelting
    fish processing
    geothermal power
    hydropower
    medical/pharmaceutical products
    tourism.

    Le

    • Evidence? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Martin S. ( 98249 )

      They backed their claims with evidence.

      You've just made empty assertions without evidence, and largely the same tired old right wing rhetoric we been hearing for years without evidence.

      You are practicing textbook big lie propaganda [wikipedia.org].

      • Yes this information does come from facts [prospects.ac.uk] though I doubt that will make any difference to your deeply ingrained views.

        It will be interesting to see how the rest of Iceland's population views the success of this trial, when medical staff only work 80% of their hours. Police, too, teachers also. All for the same pay so the cost of all these vital services rises by 25% to the icelandic taxpayers.

    • Many of those industries you're talking about already do shift work, so it would simply require a different schedule to maintain the same output.
    • I had much the same reaction, but TFA clarifies somewhat

      A range of workplaces took part, including preschools, offices, social service providers, and hospitals.

      Meanwhile

      since completion 86% of the country’s workforce are now working shorter hours or gaining the right to shorten their hours.

      To me the interesting thing is the length of the trial. Similar tests have been featured on /. before, and usually one comment was that a reduction might work short term, but what about after people used to working 40+ hours get used to it? Will more slacking off work its way into the new schedule? And what about new entries to the labor force, who never had to work 40+ hours, will they still show the same sort of productivity?

  • Then I can have 5 days off straight. Sounds like a better deal.

  • ... to sit shivering in the dark through a typical Iceland winter day.

    Better to try this policy in Hawaii [etsystatic.com].

  • full time should be cutdown / add an X2 OT level.
    Maybe make Exempt level 40K + COL?

  • leisure spending may have seen a boost too, if people have longer weekends to fill
  • I've worked what is called a "9/80" schedule, where you work 9 hours Mon-Thurs, 8 hours on Friday in week 1, then the following Friday you're off. Half the staff is off on one Friday and half the next. It was great because most people were there 9 hours anyway, and then on the Friday that you do work there were very few, if any, meetings and because half the people were gone there were many fewer interruptions and you could really get some work done. Having every other Friday off was great, and let you make
  • I've always wanted a 4 day work-week. I work in automation, so I figure, why are we automating all this stuff if we just have to work more hours? But a 4-day week isn't going to happen here. They pay pretty much unlimited time-and-a-half overtime, so there's a big incentive to put in more time once you've got over 40 in any given week. Then there's the expectations of management, the comments if you leave early, and the constantly behind projects. Basically there's a lot of demand for this work, so the

  • Funny.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @04:55PM (#61556737) Homepage
    "Reykjavik City Council and the national government" Oh ofcourse productivity was the same, if you never do anything, working less hours will get you the same productivity.

  • The work week should've halved around the time women joined the workforce.

  • A man goes to an Icelandic friend’s funeral and asks the widow:
    "Do you mind if I say a word?"

    She says: "Please do."

    The man clears his throat, gazes at the crowd, and says: "Heimurinn”

    The widow smiles and says: "Thanks, that means the world to me.”

  • Iceland's GDP doesn't break the world's top ten, or top 20, or top 50, or even top 100. How much you want to bet that their GDP drops over the next few years?

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