Firms to make four day week permanent.

[yorksrob]

The trial leaves me with plenty of question marks, personally. The first red flag is as follows:

Why did 32 not respond? If we operate on the basis of 35 companies responding affirmatively, that becomes 48% which doesn’t sound nearly so good.

Second, I can’t imagine those companies which hadn’t found it beneficial would be pleased at being described as “old-fashioned”. That seems like a gratuitous insult to firms who participated in good faith, and makes me question the impartiality of the organisers.

Third, looking at the list of companies, I’m not convinced they are a representative of the employment market in general. Many companies look exceedingly small, and the creative and non-profit sectors are overly represented. It would be interesting to know the full survey results to see the breakdown of which sorts of company found it worked for them — but I can’t see any evidence of that having been published.

I can't speak for the companies but:

1) Some may be making their minds up.
2) "Gratuitous insult" ? Companies need to be thinner skinned in this day and age
3) More conservative companies are less likely to be in the vanguard of such a change, but some might be persuaded with good evidence. Don't forget we've not had the final report yet.

It would be interesting to speculate what an effect such a change would have on those dreadful companies that rely on hours and hours of unpaid overtime. Some work practices need to be gotten rid of, regardless of whether some companies like them or not.

 

[Ediswan]

Third, looking at the list of companies, I’m not convinced they are a representative of the employment market in general. Many companies look exceedingly small, and the creative and non-profit sectors are overly represented. It would be interesting to know the full survey results to see the breakdown of which sorts of company found it worked for them — but I can’t see any evidence of that having been published.

I note the one "case study" is a modest sized sea front fish and chip shop which is offering 'two days on, two days off'. That is significantly fewer working days than a four day week (14 in 28 rather than 16).

Instead of a three day weekend, staff are going to be rotating their days with two days on followed by two days off.

 

[gswindale]

If only. I work a six-day week.

However, is that not a 40 hour week? So not that different to my 5 day week at 37.5 hours - for your extra "day", you do 2.5 hours more work (which works out to actually mean that if we take the 37.5 hour week as standard and 5 days, you are actually working 5.33333333 days?

We've become more flexible about working arrangements - start times/travel times, WFH etc. and it is a big benefit to us. One big improvement is that as a family, we can to a certain extent, do most of our daily job even if we're having to juggle childcare due to sickness.

Whether I'd want to do more hours in less days or not, I don't know, but where appropriate, the "traditional" way of working does need to evolve.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I work as a self-employed software developer - which you would think as an office-type, project-based, job, would be totally suitable for a 4-day week, but I'm pretty sure if I did it, it would wreck, rather than help, my productivity. The impression I have is that, whenever I take more than 1-2 days off at a time, the result is that when I do return to work, I end up wasting half a day or so trying to remember all the details of where I left off and getting back into the flow again. So I'm probably with @Bletchleyite on preferring - if you are going to do that - fewer hours per day. In practice I tend to work 6-7 day weeks but with extremely flexible hours, and quite a few of those days will be part-days.

Having said that, if some employers are able to offer 4-day weeks and make a success of it, then that's great! If it helps their employees without harming productivity then it's a win-win. My main concern would be that it would be damaging if it becomes the expectation that everyone will drop to a 4-day week with no loss of pay, since, as others have noted, there are many occupations where that probably couldn't work.

 

[route101]

I work 8-hour days and a shorter day on Friday. This place is quite old school and doesn't really do MS teams nor WFH. I would rather WFH most of the week, as quite costly running the car. I am newish so will ask at somepoint.