Le imprese “fiorenti” dopo aver adottato la settimana lavorativa di quattro giorni
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/four-day-work-scheme-companies-b2781275.html
di ThatchersDirtyTaint
Le imprese “fiorenti” dopo aver adottato la settimana lavorativa di quattro giorni
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/four-day-work-scheme-companies-b2781275.html
di ThatchersDirtyTaint
13 commenti
Research shows it works
People who work it says it works
Statistical data shows it works
Pilots show it works
Some CEO on a golf course somewhere: “it doesn’t work”
“The six-month trial, which began last November, involved 17 companies and nearly 1,000 workers, and was organised by the 4 Day Week Foundation.”
Considering the organiser of the trial I would have been surprised had there been any other conclusion than a resounding success.
But who cares, people will lap this up because they want to believe this.
most engineering firms finish early friday, even that makes a massive difference to me, I love it
It’s a massive perk, no wonder workers are happy with it. I wonder if the effects wear off over time as people get used to it.
Seventeen businesses, no doubt hand picked as immensely suitable to adopt a four day week, is hardly definitive evidence for _”I expect that most organisations will be doing this in the next 10 years or so.”_
So how about they try it with a few hundred business and include retail, hospitality and logistics sectors.
Where I work went to 9 day fortnights. So one day off every two weeks for full pay.
Turnover is extremely low.
I wish they would lead the article about why it helps businesses make more profit or be more successful. We don’t need to be told how much it helps wellbeing – that is not only obvious, but it’s not the thing that will get business leaders to change. We need to speak their language if we’re going to have any chance in hell at doing this.
CEOs don’t follow guidance and studies on RTO and remote work, so why would they follow on the 4 day week?
They’re psychopaths who have an ingrained belief that the more miserable their employees are, the better they perform.
We get these headlines all the time and there is a major rhetoric in the four day week and how good it is for workers.
Shame it it’s never going to happen
Whenever I see this topic come up, I fear that it’s a Monkey’s Paw and, once businesses acknowledge that five working days’ output can be achieved in four days, they will conclude that we ought to be producing six working day’s output in five days.
There are a few unanswered questions here that are really important.
1) Were staff driven through the trial period to achieve their outputs because of the incentive that 4-day weeks would remain? It’s hard to judge whether this would be as effective after a couple of years when it’s become the new norm.
2) Do these staff have performance bonuses? If so, I can totally understand why they’d make sure they achieved their targets in 4 days. Issue here is that this would be less applicable to places like the public sector (which is already horribly inefficient and falls short of targets.)
3) It’s stated here that the companies still achieved their targets but it doesn’t explicitly state that these targets were the same targets they had over 5 days. Were they adjusted at all? You’d think no but people like to hide the ball to support an outcome they like.
4) Were these companies already high performing companies? 4 days might work well in spaces where you have really capable people with lots of drive but that does not mean it’s universally applicable (again, see quality of skill sets in the public sector.)
The research on this is always sketchy and people just blindly touting it works are naive.
The research is always companies volunteering to try it and mostly getting good results.
That research will inherently have a selection bias. Because if you work in an industry where you know a 4 day work week won’t work, you won’t sign up to try it.
Even pointing this out will get me downvoted because people will always vote for their benefit. Working less and getting paid the same? No one’s really going to say that doesn’t work because it benefits them. It would be like saying you don’t deserve a pay rise. Most people just won’t do it.
Ultimately, we live in a free market economy. If a 4 day work week truly boosts productivity (for the long term, not just the start when everyone’s excited to prove it works) then companies will adopt that because they have a market edge. Companies that don’t will fall behind, get lesser quality staff and eventually die out.
My guess is that for a lot of industries, it just doesn’t work. For lots where it does, it does on the short term because people are willing to be extra productive to prove it works, but over time will fall back into old habits and productivity will drop, and there will be a small group of industry where it truly does work, and I think these will be people in jobs that require a lot of creativity.
Edit : this is all an opinion on a 4x 8 hour day with equal pay. Not reducing 5×8 to 4×10
I think the public sector going after 4 day weeks could be transformative for this country
The Civil Services and public services are never going to be the best paid and even then pensions are getting less rosy, making the 4 day week the carrott to attract and retain talent could just what this government needs