4-Day Workweek Brings No Loss of Productivity, Companies in Experiment Say (nytimes.com) 87
More than 70 companies in Britain are undergoing a six-month experiment in which their employees get a paid day off each week. So far, most companies say it's going well. SpzToid shares a report: Most of the companies participating in a four-day workweek pilot program in Britain said they had seen no loss of productivity during the experiment, and in some cases had seen a significant improvement, according to a survey of participants published on Wednesday. Nearly halfway into the six-month trial, in which employees at 73 companies get a paid day off weekly, 35 of the 41 companies that responded to a survey said they were "likely" or "extremely likely" to consider continuing the four-day workweek beyond the end of the trial in late November. All but two of the 41 companies said productivity was either the same or had improved. Remarkably, six companies said productivity had significantly improved. Talk of a four-day workweek has been around for decades.
In 1956, then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon said he foresaw it in the "not too distant future," though it has not materialized on any large scale. But changes in the workplace over the coronavirus pandemic around remote and hybrid work have given momentum to questions about other aspects of work. Are we working five days a week just because we have done it that way for more than a century, or is it really the best way? Some leaders of companies in the trial said the four-day week had given employees more time to exercise, cook, spend time with their families and take up hobbies, boosting their well-being and making them more energized and productive when they were on the clock. Critics, however, worried about added costs and reduced competitiveness, especially when many European companies are already lagging rivals in other regions. More than 3,300 workers in banks, marketing, health care, financial services, retail, hospitality and other industries in Britain are taking part in the pilot, which is one of the largest studies to date, according to Jack Kellam, a researcher at Autonomy, a think tank that is one of the organizers of the trial.
In 1956, then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon said he foresaw it in the "not too distant future," though it has not materialized on any large scale. But changes in the workplace over the coronavirus pandemic around remote and hybrid work have given momentum to questions about other aspects of work. Are we working five days a week just because we have done it that way for more than a century, or is it really the best way? Some leaders of companies in the trial said the four-day week had given employees more time to exercise, cook, spend time with their families and take up hobbies, boosting their well-being and making them more energized and productive when they were on the clock. Critics, however, worried about added costs and reduced competitiveness, especially when many European companies are already lagging rivals in other regions. More than 3,300 workers in banks, marketing, health care, financial services, retail, hospitality and other industries in Britain are taking part in the pilot, which is one of the largest studies to date, according to Jack Kellam, a researcher at Autonomy, a think tank that is one of the organizers of the trial.
Wednesday? (Score:2)
>according to a survey of participants published on Wednesday
Shouldn't it have been published Thursday afternoon?
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no time for meetings (Score:5, Interesting)
when schedules don't overlap 5 days a week we have less time for meetings. On those days where we have long stretches of open space on our calendar is where we can really knock out all the tasks that have built up.
Ideally with a 4 day work week we should have the boss's days off align with the on days for most of the team. A day without a boss is a huge benefit for productivity and can motivate people to become more self-directed and reach out and solve small problems without escalating it.
Re:no time for meetings [like that was a bad thing (Score:2)
Are you trying to suggest that meetings are a good thing? I must beg to differ, and the larger the meeting, the worse it gets.
But if you want to talk about productivity, I'm reminded of a British economist who looked at productivity and predicted a 12-hour work week long before this. Since it turns out that productivity has grown even FASTER than his data suggested, you may wonder what happened.
I actually think a lot of people would be happy with shorter work weeks, though the book where I read about it sug
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Are you trying to suggest that meetings are a good thing?
No, he's saying that lack of meetings gives him more time to do his job.
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No, he's saying that lack of meetings gives him more time to do his job.
Funny. My job is coordinating people. Meetings are when I get things done.
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I can't imagine a job, ANY job would be something I "love".
I work for one and one reason ONLY...money.
If I did not have to have enough money to support the lifestyle I want, I would not work, not at all, period.
Work is a mercenary thing.
I'm sure there are a few weird outliers out there, but c'mon...no one wants to work if they didn't have to.
Re:no time for meetings [like that was a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
> I'm sure there are a few weird outliers out there, but c'mon...no one wants to work if they didn't have to
A lot more than a few. People are social animals and generally want to feel helpful or useful. It's true, a lot of jobs don't give people that or very little of it, but that doesn't mean it's not what they're looking for.
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I'm a very sociable person....that's what friends are for. I'm blessed to have a large number of them, and most of them I regularly get together with in "meatspace".
Co-workers are co-workers... with almost no exception, I do not socialize with co-workers outside of the office. That just keeps things neater and my private life more my own.
So, to me, a job is not a social construct, it is merely a place to make m
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I can't imagine a job, ANY job would be something I "love".
I work for one and one reason ONLY...money.
If I did not have to have enough money to support the lifestyle I want, I would not work, not at all, period.
Really, that sounds like you're living a miserable existence. You spend a huge fraction of your waking hours doing things you wouldn't be doing if you had a choice? That sounds an awful lot like indentured servitude. And that's the lifestyle you want? I think I'd much rather be what you think is a "weird outlier".
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That sounds an awful lot like indentured servitude.
Yes it does.
I think I'd much rather be what you think is a "weird outlier".
You're still an indentured servant, but doing the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and saying, "la la la la."
Re:no time for meetings [like that was a bad thing (Score:4, Informative)
That sounds an awful lot like indentured servitude.
Yes it does.
I think I'd much rather be what you think is a "weird outlier".
You're still an indentured servant, but doing the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and saying, "la la la la."
Wow. I've had jobs I disliked, and jobs I really, really enjoyed. Like, "wake up in the morning eager to get to work" kind of enjoyed. For the last 15 years it's been the latter. I could quit tomorrow if I wanted and be fine financially, so the money isn't what keeps me at it. There is no 'putting your fingers in your ears and saying, "la la la la"' involved, and only someone who's never been truly happy with their work would think it might be that way.
Look, I understand that most everyone works because they have to, and that an overwhelming majority of them truly don't like what they do to earn a living. And I'm not saying that those people should find a way to love what they hate. I'm just saying that it's not that way for everybody. I can't tell whether you're in denial, or envious, or just terminally cynical, but whatever the source of your disaffection is, you're just plain wrong.
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Not miserable, but just something that's common since most people have to work for a living.
It's called "having a job".
But I make enough money to be able to buy what I want outside the job, and do what I want outside the job, and that fulfills me.
I'm a huge photography nut....and those bodies and lenses don't come cheap. I get out whenever I
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I work for one and one reason ONLY...money.
If I did not have to have enough money to support the lifestyle I want, I would not work, not at all, period.
Work is a mercenary thing.
I'm sure there are a few weird outliers out there, but c'mon...no one wants to work if they didn't have to.
I must be an outlier then.
Sure, I work for money. But if I had enough money (won the lottery, saved, inheritance etc) that I wouldn't have to work, I would still want to work. Perhaps I would work for a non profit instead for free. Or work on any of the zillion ideas I've had.
Once I got downsized (company shut down) with 6 months pay. I lasted 1 month at home. (Of which 1 week was away on vacation). I got restless.
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Interesting branch of the discussion, but not what I would have anticipated... My basic thought on the topic is that there should be a trade off that involves paying more for the work people don't want to do, but also seeking to find the people who are relatively willing to do that work, especially when it's essential work. And people who want to control their work more should probably expect to get paid less... But all of this is part of ekronomics, where my favorite joke and summary remains the couch pota
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Perfect! Then all you need to do is start your own business and hire all those underpaid but more productive workers away from their current employers by paying them more. You'll be able to destroy the competition by lowering prices and still pay your employees mo
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NAK
Re: no time for meetings (Score:2)
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Yes, we generally assume 5 day, 40 hour work week for a salaried office employee for these discussions. It usually doesn't need to be said.
If you're paid hourly, the money part obviously changes.
If you're doing psychical labor, there's a much higher correlation between hours worked and productivity than there is in an office job, so we usually leave that out of the discussion.
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Yup...those of us that are 1099 contracting LIKE the hours.
Hours worked, mean money earned!!!
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Yup...that's how it works.
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Yup...that's how it works.
It kinda is. I'm 1099 too. Huge part of how I figure out my rates is looking at what salaried employees are getting and using that as a reference point.
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In my state I have to work a minimum number of hours as a salary employee.
Interesting. When I was a lad, I had "salaried" explained to me as a two way street: I didn't get paid for overtime but I also didn't need to work a set number of hours as long as I got my job done. My daughter's boyfriend says he gets his job done in about three hours a day.
I don't see why a state should poke it's nose in these agreements. As long as the employee and employer are happy, what's the issue?
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In my state I have to work a minimum number of hours as a salary employee.
Interesting. When I was a lad, I had "salaried" explained to me as a two way street: I didn't get paid for overtime but I also didn't need to work a set number of hours as long as I got my job done. My daughter's boyfriend says he gets his job done in about three hours a day.
I don't see why a state should poke it's nose in these agreements. As long as the employee and employer are happy, what's the issue?
At my former job it was similar -- we didn't have set hours. We were salaried, and as long as we got in our 80 hrs/week, management didn't care which 80 they were...
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The minimum is, I believe, 30 hours a week (130 hours a month) to be considered a full-time employee. It's not a state thing, it's a federal tax [irs.gov] thing for the business. And if a business doesn't want to claim you as a full-time employee but give you salary anyways they can ignore the issue. If you are working less than 130 hours a month and the company is giving you benefits and writing them off on their own business tax, then that's going to be a problem when the IRS finds out.
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Paid day off each week. (Score:2)
It was my understanding that the workers were doing longer days of work each day (10 hours) to make up for the day off. They aren't getting a paid day off, they're still doing 40 hours, just in four days not five. This makes it sound like its a gift from employers to pay them for a day off.
Re:Paid day off each week. (Score:4, Interesting)
It was my understanding that the workers were doing longer days of work each day (10 hours) to make up for the day off. They aren't getting a paid day off, they're still doing 40 hours, just in four days not five. This makes it sound like its a gift from employers to pay them for a day off.
Nope, this is 4 day, 32 hour weeks. Shows how much time people waste in a week. Honestly for a labour job 40 hours a week makes sense, but most jobs these days are mental, rather than physical. I know I usually try to make Fridays an easy day with little or no work to do, and just being available for questions and "firefighting".
Once upon a time I had a 4 day a week job, although I was paid hourly, so it cost me money. I loved it, Weekends and Wednesdays off. Never work more than 2 days in a row. Fantastic!
Re: Paid day off each week. (Score:2)
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Why would it?
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32hr usually is enough to quality for benefits.
That's a separate discussion tho. Most of our policies around the work week are done for historical reasons, not because there's a valid reason for them.
Basically all the evidence we have suggests that moving from employer provided healthcare to universal healthcare, and dropping to a 4 day work week would be a massive boost to quality of life with no hit to the economy.
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Do laborers get a day off also? That means you need 20% more shop employees, 20% more farmers, 20% more truck drivers.
The need can be made up with immigrants but no productivity boost as only the same amount of work is actually done. Only now you have 30 million more people who need housing, water and sewer, schools
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Just re-define 32 hours/week to be full time.
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In the US, yeah, it would. In Britain? What benefits are we worried about losing there? The big kicker in America is health insurance. Pretty sure that's not tied to the job as a crowbar held over the employee's head like it is here. What else you worried about?
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In the civilized world, employers aren't allowed to use the threat of withholding access to it (without financial ruin) over workers as a bludgeon.
Re:Paid day off each week. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's less about how much time people waste in a week and more about how tiring a work week is. If you really work all-out for a 5 day week, a 2 day weekend isn't enough time to fully recover. That means you either have to pace yourself over the week (leading to the idea people are slacking off) or you come to work the next week at less than 100%. The net result either way is that you don't accomplish as much in your time as you'd expect by assuming peak productivity all the time.
This is why the people pushing workers to work long hours and come in on weekends are just plain wrong. Working too much just wears workers out and causes their productivity to decrease. There's an extensive literature on this, and workers accomplish less with 50 or 60 hours per week on the job than 40. And that's not work per hour; that's work per work week. Those extra hours on the job are counterproductive. The only thing they do is make sadistic bosses happy.
And this isn't limited to intellectual work, either. It's also true of physical work. People get physically worn down by their work and less efficient. It's better to give them plenty of rest so they're able to accomplish something when they're working rather than pushing them beyond their physical endurance.
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cough
A 48 hour workweek is 8 hours for 5 days.
only in other countries.
Re:Paid day off each week. (Score:4, Insightful)
It was my understanding that the workers were doing longer days of work each day (10 hours) to make up for the day off. They aren't getting a paid day off, they're still doing 40 hours, just in four days not five. This makes it sound like its a gift from employers to pay them for a day off.
Well, possibly. It's not really the idea of the four day week to compress five days work into four days but no doubt some of the companies ran it like that. The idea is that you can be more 'in the zone' for four days and spend less time on unproductive tasks. Certainly my ex-boss, when he semi-retired, said that switching to part time work forced you to be more disciplined with your time.
Four 8-hour days (Score:5, Informative)
It was my understanding that the workers were doing longer days of work each day (10 hours) to make up for the day off. They aren't getting a paid day off, they're still doing 40 hours, just in four days not five. This makes it sound like its a gift from employers to pay them for a day off.
The book "Stolen Focus" describes the experiment (and a bunch of other unrelated issues), and notes that it was 4 days at 8 hours per day.
The type of work wasn't explicitly stated, but the company had very good measures of productivity going back several years. I got the impression it was some type of document processing (such as writing and proofing contract documents) and put the experiment to the workers: we'll try it for 3 months, and if you can sustain the same level of productivity then we'll make the change permanent.
The workers figured out several ways to increase productivity, such as linking 2 computer systems so that documents from one system didn't have to be manually entered into the 2nd system, and so on.
The point from the book was that the extra day off allowed the workers to do errands on the day-off workday, which was a lot easier than trying to squeeze things in over lunch break or on the weekends. It allowed the workers more time for decompressing, personal projects, and resulted in them being better refreshed and more willing to work on Monday.
Apparently we get a "bank account" of nor-epinephrine in our brain that gets depleted as we do things over the course of the day. This is why you can feel exhausted coming home from work - even if the work you do is not physically exhausting. One full night's sleep doesn't completely refill the account, which is why people feel continuously exhausted at work, but come back from vacation energized.
The extra day off allows people to devote a lot of their mental energy to work, but also gives plenty of time to refresh and restore levels.
(Plus a lot of other things like getting a poor night's sleep, the effect of blue LEDs on sleep, constant interruptions from E-mail, meetings, and office drop-ins, and such. The book is all about the ways we are being distracted in modern times.)
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That may work in the UK. In the US, most tech professionals work five 10-hour days. So going to four 10-hour days wouldn't work for most companies.
2 day working week - coming soon! (Score:4, Funny)
Monday morning / Friday afternoon, when combined = 1 day where not much gets done.
So, unsurprisingly, moving to a 4-day working week in this experiment shows UK works are just super awesome!
But we are cunning over here in the UK, this is just a ruse, as soon, we'll be back to the Monday morning without much done and the Thursday afternoon without much done and the 3-day working week will arrive!
Productivity will amazingly be exactly the same, mainly because the entire economy is grinding to a halt and most staff in companies do absolutely fuck all each day as it is.
All hands off deck, for the 2-day working week!
Then we will have 5 entire days to do what people in UK do best, get drunk and talk about the weather!
* correction... (Score:2)
*shows UK works are just super awesome!*
workers ...
Yeah, you can see I'm one of them, already drunk and it's only Thursday.
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Re: * correction... (Score:2)
We don't worry about whether it's Friday in the UK, just whether the sun's past the yardarm. And I'm sure it's past the yardarm somewhere everyday of the week!
Re: 2 day working week - coming soon! (Score:2)
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I think I disagree but I admit like most people it's biased and self serving.
Personally I like my job, and I love getting things done with it, clients are happy, projects get completed, company makes money, I get a good paycheque, feel productive.
But sometimes two days off is not enough to get all the personal life items done. Get home during the week, make dinner, wash clothes, tidy things up, do grocery shopping. It's almost an art to minimize the time we have to do what we want and just enough time to do
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It was not even 100 years ago that Ford went to the 5 day work week. Most were still working at least 50 hours a week. It was not until,1938 that we had overtime in the US.
Employers want an even playing field, and tend not to want to do things that put them at a competitive disadvantage. So if we pass laws that create a level playing field, such as caving to lazy workers, that can be a net benefit.
The re is no reason to work more than 30 or 35 hours p
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It breaks up the weekend.
Re:Cue slashdot old fuckers (Score:4)
And that argument will be trotted out yet again when we go from 1 day a week to zero. Incredible!
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I'm ok with never working again. Plenty of hobbies and interests to fill my time with.
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Strawman much? I don't know any old fuckers that think that, I'm an old fucker and I don't think that.
Unstated obvious (Score:3)
Only applies to white collar desk workers
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Was gonna say much the same thing. Or rather: how did this work for manufacturing? Cuz this isn't going to work for manufacturing. Unless you have staggered shifts to keep people out of the factory three days of the week (and someone else in there doing the work instead).
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The bean counters tell me that the company needs more shifts not fewer. If we could run 2 shifts or even 3 shifts everyday then we could make more money. No one is going to slow the money train.
Hawethorne Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
"the novelty of being research subjects and the increased attention from such could lead to temporary increases in workers' productivity".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I always wonder how these 4-day workweek studies correct for this factor.
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It tends to wear off after a while, as people get used to it. Human beings are just not good at making a sustained effort for months on end to cheat the system.
Besides it wouldn't do any good. If a company did decide to go to 4 days permanently on the back of this research, they would soon switch back to 5 again if they found productivity falling.
Boss can't tell if less work is being done. (Score:2)
I've worked for a lot of people who were pretty clueless about how much work the employees were doing.
Software work is especially hard, but even on the factory floor it's amazing to me how poorly actual productivity is tracked at some places.
Welcome to Utopia (Score:1)
Can't have industry and commerce shut down for a paid day off
Employ twice as many people and pay them half as much. Easy-peasy. I guess we solved unemployment and job satisfaction in one go
Unless I'm missing something obvious here
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You claim industry and commerce can't be shut down for an additional day? Explain. We already do that for two days each week, and three or more days in several weeks.
In most cases the work doesn't care which day of the week it is done.
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>In most cases the work doesn't care which day of the week it is done.
Unless it is medical, financial, or infrastructure. Just those niche industries.
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Even medical and infrastructure have a percent of office workers doing the 9-5 M-F.
As for financial, the major markets are open M-F 9:30 - 4pm Eastern Time. Banks are M-F and a few hours on Saturday... a hole or two in middle of the week won't hurt anyone, hardly any staff are in those things compared to past decades because ATM and phone apps have killed bank staffing.
The banks near me have empty parking lots with the few of cars for the employees that are there. Some drive thru hours, sure, but that's
Cue grumbling industry veterans (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm waiting for all the people who will insist that because they suffered from working 5 days a week, others must suffer as well.
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I'm waiting for all the people who will insist that because they suffered from working 5 days a week, others must suffer as well.
Are you kidding? the 20 percent increase in productivity heralds a new direction for humanity. This is great, and I wonder why the coprporations haven't used this in the past. 1 day less a week with no loss in productivity, and they were making the same amount of stuff as they were at 40 hours.
Because if each employee made 100 widgets a week, working 40 hours, they can make 100 widgets working 32.
Sarcasm off.
Let's say you have 10 employees making 100 widgets a week when working a 40 hour week.
You
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You are assuming the productivity of hours 32-40 for the week is the same as hour 1.
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You are assuming the productivity of hours 32-40 for the week is the same as hour 1.
I assume only that the output is the exact same for a 32 hour week as for a 40 hour week,
If they make identical amounts of what they are producing at 32 hours as they do at 40 hours, the math is simple and unyielding,
U.S. regulatory issues (Score:2)
The U.S. Regulatory state may have a problem with this kind of thing. Payed time off would work but then what does a company do with the part timers that are employed at under 36 hours a week. So then why would the company even offer full time employment. Only offer 32 hour work weeks then you would not be required to offer insurance.
I personally think employers should be prohibited from offering insurance in the US. Buying insurance on the open market, divorced from the employer, would make it truly portab
Of course there's no loss. It's not different. (Score:3)
If most employees working from home today are putting in more than 32 hours actual work per week, I'll eat my hat.
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If most employees working from home today are putting in more than 32 hours actual work per week, I'll eat my hat.
Similarly, if most employees working from the office today are putting in more than 32 hours actual work per week, I'll eat your hat.
Hold on (Score:3, Funny)
That isn't a loss of productivity, that is an astonishing and groundbreaking 20 percent increase in productivity! They need to see if they can hit a 40 percent increase in productivity by cutting back to 3 days. Then 2, then 1, and when no one is working, a 100 percent increase over the current low productivity 40 hour 5 day workweek. The true workers paradise!
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That isn't a loss of productivity, that is an astonishing and groundbreaking 20 percent increase in productivity!
Yeah, I was going to bring that up. I think TFA meant "production" or "output", not "productivity". If productivity was the same, the workers would work 20% fewer hours and produce 20% less, meaning the net effect is a 25% increase in their cost per unit output (the paid day off). But this was an article in the New York Times so I don't expect them to get the economic terms right.
As you say, a 20% increase in output per hour would be jaw dropping.
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That isn't a loss of productivity, that is an astonishing and groundbreaking 20 percent increase in productivity!
Yeah, I was going to bring that up. I think TFA meant "production" or "output", not "productivity". If productivity was the same, the workers would work 20% fewer hours and produce 20% less, meaning the net effect is a 25% increase in their cost per unit output (the paid day off). But this was an article in the New York Times so I don't expect them to get the economic terms right.
As you say, a 20% increase in output per hour would be jaw dropping.
Exactly. In a world where real numbers mean something. Of course productivity would stay the same if people worked 32 hours a week instead of 40. But the company or institution would have to hire extra people to keep up with production. That would presumably be two people working 8 hours per week for every employer's 10 people now working 32 hours per week. It isn't rocket surgery! 8^)
I wonder if people don't want to work at all. I did a math based calculation on this topic, and it was marked as "troll."
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Well, no. It means that overworking produces negative productivity. The first 4 days probably haven't changed any, you're simply not getting swamped by errors on day 5.
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Well, no. It means that overworking produces negative productivity. The first 4 days probably haven't changed any, you're simply not getting swamped by errors on day 5.
How incredibly weak is a person who fails if they work an extra 8 hours in an entire week? That's pretty sad that so many people cannot work a 40 hour week. I know people who want to work as little as possible love this idea.
Can you show me the citations that people are getting swamped by errors if they work a 5 day week? I mean, I really don't care. You do you, and if your max is 32 or even 8 hours a week, great. - I'll work the hours I feel like working.
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The studies from Finland were pretty conclusive, I'd have said. You can ignore the multitude of studies all you like, but in the end corporations will do what is good for corporations. If that means a 32-hour week with no change in pay, then they'll reduce your work to 32 hours and you will just have to accept it.
Weak? No. Strong for working within tolerance levels and accepting what those levels are. If you can't get your work done in a timely manner, then that's really your problem.
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The studies from Finland were pretty conclusive, I'd have said. You can ignore the multitude of studies all you like, but in the end corporations will do what is good for corporations. If that means a 32-hour week with no change in pay, then they'll reduce your work to 32 hours and you will just have to accept it.
Weak? No. Strong for working within tolerance levels and accepting what those levels are. If you can't get your work done in a timely manner, then that's really your problem.
The issue is have these studies shown that the output is not the same, but productivity has to increase by 20 percent to maintain the same output.
Math - do you even do it? If you decrease the work week by 20 percent, productivity must increase, unless the idea is to lower output. If I make 100 doodads a week working 40 hours - 2.5 hours per doodad., can I make 100 doodads a week by working 20 percent less? Identical productivity demands that I produce more doodads per hour. Identical productivity dema
Thanks to outsourcing (Score:1)
Juicing the throttle (Score:2)
I don't see software/internet in the list (Score:2)
Government shutdown for two years (Score:2)
How is this enforced? Also dystopian garbage (Score:2)
Clearly this would not work for assembly line factory jobs. This would not work for call centres. So this is some sort of white collar, maybe we can measure productivity absolutely, but not minutely at a minute to minute employee to employee level.
We know in cases like this 10% of the employees do 90% of the work. I would hazard the hypothesis that, You will not be capable of preventing these 10% from not working likely 6.5 days a week. Then getting the 90% out of their way, removing distractions, is likely