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How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out?
cellocgw writes "My company is in the process of implementing a version of '9/80,' a work schedule that squeezes 80 hours' labor time into 9 business days and provides every other Friday off. I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies, and how it's worked out for other Slashdot readers. Is your system flexible? Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week? Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep? And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"
It was really nice, especially if you set it up so that one week you're paid, and the next you get the Friday off. They were also flexible about it and would let you switch occasionally, although that obviously depends on the company.
My company does it - and yes frequently we get hosed out of our day off OR have to travel on our day off. It is inconvenient to many of our customers and I spend a lot of time on my off Fridays checking my e-mail for potential issues. It is not much of a day off. We USED to have a 4-9-4 work week, where we worked 4 nine hour days and half days (4 hours) on Fridays this was AWESOME and I loved it - 9/80 is bogus IMHO
I interviewed at a large defense contractor, the office I interviewed at did a 9/80, it sounded great at the time and still does. As for lost sleep... seriously... you work 9-9-9-9-8, 9-9-9-9-off. I doubt the extra hour a day will kill you. If it does, just eat through lunch.
You get every friday or monday off depending on the stagger. The idea of 9/80 bothers me. There is a point of no return for employees. If you are going to work like that, you should make sure and take two one hour breaks a day.
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Also, to answer your question, those off-days were always respected, and I never missed the lost hour each day.
Wait-wait-wait-wait... Do you mean to say that you've found a job in the (non-government) tech industry that lets you work only 40 hours a week?
... Are they hiring?
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
If your manager pulls you in to cover a crisis, you need to demand flex time (a different day off next week) or overtime.
Or, send them an invoice from your consulting firm for about six times whatever your daily rate is.
A friend of mine worked under 9/80 and loved it. He felt like he could be more productive staying later on the busy days and he took the extra friday off to take small trips with the family.
I worked for the same company but different location under a flexible hour system where the only requirement was that I met the 40 hrs per week. It made things much more difficult to free up space on the weekends, but allowed me to be more available during the week.
It's just preference.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
While it is not a bad idea in and of itself, changing work schedules to some bizarre non-standard system is usually a sign that the company management is trying to squeeze more work out of you. First they change the schedule to give you more work per day, then they will ask you to work more days.
In this economy, they know you don't have anywhere to go, so unless you fight back against this or leave for a new job altogether, you're going to get screwed. Ask them if they've been considering offshoring the IT department. I'd be willing to bet that within the next year they are looking to thin the local IT staff to a skeleton crew and then migrate the servers over to India where they can do your job for a third of the cost.
With 4 tens, I get every friday off. As far as being pulled in on other days, it depends on whether your manager is an ethical person who respects their employees or not. You are the only one who knows enough to tell that, and a bunch of slashdot pundits won't help.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
I've worked for two consecutive companies with 9/80. At the first it was optional (but most people did it) at the second (current one) it is pretty much mandatory.
Let me tell you.... it's awesome.
Having a 3-day weekend every other week outweighs any perceived negatives. It gives you the ability to leave on a trip on a Thursday night... spend 3 days somewhere and still make it back for work without taking any vacation.
To answer your questions:
- I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies.
For both of my companies you work 9 hours a day except the friday you work you only work 8 hours. Then you get every other friday off.
- Is your system flexible?
At the first company it was... you could choose which friday you wanted to start your 9/80 schedule on... so half of the people were gone every other friday.
At my current job it's not... everyone has the same friday off. I see the benefits of both. Personally, I really enjoyed fridays at my previous job... when (at least) half the people were gone I could get a lot of work done.
Both places I worked for have been flexible in your start time in the morning... meaning I can go in early and still get off early to get stuff done... which leads to:
- Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week?
Yes. If I really need to get something done after work then I'll go in early. If I'm there by 7:00 then I can get off around 4:00 to 4:30... leaving plenty of time.
- Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep?
Yes. You can use it for weekend trips like I mentioned above. Also, it's a great time to catch up around the house (mending fences, etc.). Finally, it's also a great day to get grocery shopping (and similar) done because most people are working...
I use the day a lot of different ways... and I do often sleep in a bit... but never sleep the day away!
- And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"
Has never happened to me. Like I said.. at my current job the friday off is mandatory. They actually turn out the lights and turn down the air-conditioning, etc. They really expect no one to be there.
But... I know my jobs are normal (I'm a research scientist at laboratories) so YMMV.
In conclusion... it can only be a good thing... go for it!
Friedmud
...this is what Ask Slashdot has been reduced to? Asking how a rather small change to a weekly schedule might work out?
Future Ask Slashdots We Can Look Forward To:
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My employer implemented a schedule like this last summer. They're planning on doing it again for 4 or 5 months starting in March or April. It's really pretty nice. Basically, while they're in effect you need to work an extra hour each day. How you do this is up to you. I ended up splitting the difference--get in 30 minutes early and stay 30 minutes longer. Since it was company-wide all the meeting schedules were adapted pretty quickly. It's worth it to have a 3-day weekend every other weekend. Makes setting up trips/vacations a whole lot easier.
This guy's the limit!
I work the 9/80 schedule but if you can get them to let you take every other Monday or better yet every other Wednesday. You can get a whole lot more done on a Wednesday. No lines at the bank, grocery store, etc. Unless you decide to just stay up all night Tuesday playing Halo then sleeping till 4 in the afternoon.
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." ~Ozzy Osborne
Seriously though, does anybody actually work only 40 hours a week?
Colin McNamara - CCIE #18233 "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible just takes a little longer"
I once worked a job that was 3x12.5, and it was great! It was overnight, and the boss didn't mind if we slept during the downtimes. The staggered schedule also made it that we had a full 7 days straight off every third week (followed by 6x12.5 in 7 days, that was a bit of a killer). Though being overnight in made family life hell for 3 days, the time off more than made up for it.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
I've worked 9/80 for the last 13 years or more. I also recently became a supervisor and am still working 9/80 and most of my employees do as well. In our company (68,000 employees total), it is generally implemented as schedule a, b, c, d (where a and b are opposite Friday's and c and d are opposite Monday's. Way back when I did LAN Admin work (Novell back then), Monday's were "password reset day" so I chose one of the Monday off schedules. On my "Monday on" I work from home - so I only drive in 4 days a week.
I don't think I would ever want to go back to a 5 day a week schedule - 9/80 is just so much better.
You also asked about whether the company respect those days off. In general they do really well with it. It is normally the employee that makes most decisions about "oh, we have some vendors coming in Monday - I will come in and just take the following Monday instead." There is almost never a "we need you to give up your day off" (I have rarely ever even heard of this happening and it certainly never happened to me).
My employer offers optional 9/80 schedules. I estimate that 90% of the employees voluntarily choose 9/80. It is great to have at lest 26 three day weekends every year. When holidays fall on Monday, you may get a 4 day weekend.
The off-Friday is well respected by management. The managers generally don't come in either.
An off-Friday is a great time for banking, appointments, the start of vacation, volunteering in your kids' school, etc.
Most people who choose the 5/40 schedule do so because they need to be home early to meet kids at the school bus or because the spouse works a regular schedule and they want to match schedules.
Flexibility is always good. We have core hours from 10:00 to 3:00. Some people come in very early and leave at 3:00 to minimize the time kids are home alone. It can save a lot of child care costs. Others like me regularly come in at 10:00 and leave at 7:00.
The company I work for just switched to a 9/80 a few months ago. We're a little different since we have a schedule A and a schedule B, so only 1/2 the people are at work any given Friday. It's had some ups & downs.
Here's what I see as the positives:
1. Having a 4 day work week every other week rocks!
2. Getting paid on the Friday where I work 5 days makes it all the more bearable.
3. Easier to get chores, errands done since everyone else is at work.
4. I get more work done during the last hour of every 9 hour day than any other hour.
Here's the negatives:
1. It's a PITA to schedule meetings.
2. Sometimes I travel and it seems to always fall on a week where I'm supposed to be off that Friday.
3. Customers are annoyed because they're not on the same schedule and aren't understanding that it won't be until Monday before I get back to them.
4. I feel like I have less time to get work done since every other week I only work 4 days.
5. More free time means I spend more money.
6. Getting to work while it's dark & leaving when it's dark is depressing.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
Pros:
Cons:
9/80 is best when paired with a flex time schedule so that you can move around hours when you need to. The off friday gives you an option to tell your boss "i'll work more these days or just come in friday" if you want to take a different day off instead of the off friday. Coming in on the off friday usually means the office is dead. That can be good and bad. Some people like not having anyone around because they normally get interrupted too much when people are at the office. Other people hate it because there's nobody else to kick the bucket with.
If you find you are normally working more than 8 hours everyday, 9/80 is actually a good option because you will have a decent excuse for not coming in on the off fridays and you will have to work 9 hours most days anyway. If you find you are working even on the weekends, 9/80 will have no impact on your hours.
As a single guy, I prefer 9/80. But I do know some family types that prefer the 5/40 since they really need the consistent 8 hour days to keep their family schedules synced. At first you will loath the 9 hour days because that extra hour is bigger than it looks. After a while though 9 hours will seem like nothing and the working fridays will seem really short.
I'd rather have 4x9hour days, a 10% cut in pay, and 3 days off every week. (Hey, most of the last 10% is taxes anyway, right). If everyone did this, we could avoid tons of layoffs nationwide, lower energy costs (4 days commuting instead of 5), and 3-day weekends every week ...
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I'm not on a 9/80 plan, but I've been with my company long enough that when they started requiring us to use or lose our vacation every year rather than carrying it over, I started taking Fridays off most of the summer. I had mixed success with it; just because I'm not planning to work on a given day, that doesn't mean that my customer doesn't want to schedule a meeting or call me on the phone, or that people stopped sending me emails that needed attention, or there might be training from the head office folks or whatever, so Fridays were often only half-off, or I'd sleep late and do email around noon. But still, that meant that I really did get my Saturday off :-)
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It was great. I usually put in 10 hour days anyway, so someone telling me that I was to get every other Friday off was great! Not only do you get the occasional 3 day weekend, but you will probably find that the Fridays that you do work are really quiet - assuming not everyone in the office is on the same 9/80 schedule. If you are in a "meeting rich" environment, you are spared on Fridays because half the people aren't there.
After I got into middle management, 9/80 basically meant that I didn't feel guilty for taking a Friday off, but often-times I was working those days as well.
In big companies where folks that work a normal 8 hour day are treated like slackers, it's a good way to actually get some benefit for those 8+ hour days. Also, remember that 5 days of vacation turns into 10 days off! Bonus!
The company I work for runs 4x10 as the "regular" workweek for most of engineering and production. Friday (the usual day off) counts as an overtime day. Non-exempt people get time and a half, and even the salaried people get straight time for that day.
I usually come in for a half day every Friday and pick up a few extra hours (business needs permitting, of course), though sometimes I'll sleep in an hour or two first--I usually show up around 615 the rest of the week. It still gives me an afternoon off to get stuff done around the house, run errands, or go to the range before my wife gets home. If we need to travel for the weekend, I can either use the day to pack and get ready, or we can leave early if she takes a day off.
If you find a company that offers this, take it.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
I already work 80 hours.
Oh wait, 9 days. Ok, I see what you mean now. I thought you meant 5.
The company measures my performance by what I get done.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If you're hourly, you can often get away with a "40 hour" work week that lasts less than 45 hours. If you're salaried, whether in government or not, you will be expected to get your job done whether it takes 10 hours a week or 168 hours a week. If you don't get it done, in this economic environment they will find someone who will get it done.
That said, my wife works a 40 hour week that's supposed to be 4 days per week, 10 hours per day. Usually that translates to 8am to 7pm daily. She say's she'd never go back to 5x8.
Unfortunately we car pool to work, so I work 8 to 7 as well. And then I usually put in 4 or 5 hours on Friday, and a few hours each on Saturday and Sunday. The difference.... You guessed it. She's in an hourly position that isn't exempt from overtime rules. I'm in a salaried position that is exempt from overtime rules. And to top it off, she makes about 20% more than I do because she is in an industry that competes to get workers. I'm in an industry that has more workers than it can afford.
All in all 4-5x9 probably works OK, and if you're in an urban area, it's 10% less time that you'll sit in traffic. Maybe more because you either be commuting early or late. If the extra hour in the work day is cutting into your sleep, your commute is way too long. If it's cutting into your TV watching, then get TiVo and watch on your new day off.
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I worked a 9/80 schedule for years and grew to hate it. If you've got any kind of a commute that turns a 9 hour day into an 11 hour day. Days seemed interminable. All those extra hours for two days off a month. And the three days fly by because you tend to pack everything into your day off. Car maintenance, doctor visits, any errands.
A new company got the contract and didn't include the flex schedule and we went back to 8 hour days. It was like a vacation every day. 8 hours was a breeze.
Better than any flex schedule was finding a job I could telecommute part of the week. Now that's a luxury. Work is exactly the same but the stress is way lower. You don't realize how much time you spend getting ready and getting to work. No jarring alarm clocks, no traffic. I'm probably going to jinx it saying this, but since I started the telecommute schedule I haven't been really sick once. The difference is really quite amazing.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
the countries that have higher productivity per worker than the US.
According to a U.N. report released in 2007, only Norway had higher productivity per hour worked than the U.S.
Moof!
From a non-scientific poll we conducted as undergraduates, we found some interesting results:
All of the science and engineering students we asked said the next sheet should go over. All of them. (About 14 people.)
The art students' inclination (8 of 12 people) was to put it under, with the other four simply saying "whichever way it ends up - I don't even look."
You two are completely missing the schedule. Not 8-9 days straight, but rather:
Mon-Thurs 9 hrs a day, Friday 8 hrs. Sat, Sun off. Next week Mon-Thurs 9 hrs a day. Fri, Sat, Sun off. 80 hours within 2 weeks, rather than 40 hours in 1 week.
A 3 day weekend twice a month. Sometimes a 4 day weekend when it coincides with a federal holiday.
It works well.
This doesn't answer the poster's question in the least (hey, this is Slashdot after all), but the wackiest schedule I ever worked was when I was deployed to Turkey in the military for 2 weeks.
There were only three of us to cover one around-the-clock job: a staff sergeant, another airman, and me. The sergeant made it so that both he and the other airman worked two consecutive 12-hour shifts and then had a full day off. The only way you can do that, though, is to make the third guy pull a 12-hour shift with the next 24 hours off with no "break" in the schedule. Think about it: 12 then 24. My work shift (and hence my off-hours) were completely inverted each cycle.
I was definitely pissed about it at first. But it's the military, who am I going to complain to? I went along with it, consoling myself that it was only for two weeks. But man, I gotta tell you, I got used to it in just a few days. You would think that it would be impossible to get used to a schedule where one day you're going to sleep at 6AM and the next day at 6PM, but it worked fine for me because it meant that I got to sleep for 8 hours straight and then wander the base (or do whatever) for another 8. It was because of this schedule that I got to get off base for awhile and go on some tours of the country.
I could almost do that schedule again over here since my sysadmin job doesn't tie me to any specific hours, but my wife would never agree to it. The biggest downfall is that I'd never get a "real" weekend without using up vacation time.
I've worked four ten-hour days at several companies, and I love it. Recently I had a little boy, and with his sleep schedule I found it really hard to spend enough time with him after work, so I'm back to five eight-hour days. It feels like cheating, going home every day at 4pm. Until Friday morning :)
:) Live in Portland? Want to move here? We're hiring.
Four other folks at our company work 4x10, including the CEO, and it works just fine. Friday is fucking sacrosanct: no emails, no phone calls, no contact of any kind. If a fire flares up, other people in the office deal with it.
And when I say 4x10, I mean it. We track our time pretty religiously, and our most bust-ass employee has averaged about 42 hours a week over 18 months.
And yes, we're a tech company
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Why, back in our day we would wake at quarter-to-ten, half-an-hour before we went to sleep, then we'd pay $10 to go work in the mines for 28 hours a day, 373 days a year, double-time on holidays. And we considered ourselves lucky!!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
isn't for suckers, theoretically... It's supposed to mean you work whatever damn hours you like and they judge the result, not your exact attendance.
I know things rarely work that way though.
"I only speak the truth"
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It's interesting that everyone is implicitly assuming that keeping a 40-hour work week makes sense when it's divided into a different number of days. This almost certainly isn't true, because people's productivity drops after a certain amount of time at work in a single shift. Companies like Ford did a lot of research into this a long time ago, which is why we all work 40-hour weeks now. (Of course, these days, managers who naively assume that extra hours = extra work getting done have pushed it to 40 hours plus breaks, when it often used to be 40 hours including breaks, hence the expression "9–5".) And Ford's people were doing manual work, not jobs that depend primarily on thinking, where the number of productive hours per week, averaged over the long term, is lower for most people.
I think it's both sad and quite telling that no-one seems to be considering that those extra few hours might not really be worth anything anyway, but employees who get an extra day off every couple of weeks are likely to be both better rested/more productive while at work and more loyal to the company. Businesses that have tried radically different working practices have sometimes seen counter-intuitive results, particularly when it came to working much lower hours. I'd like to see a company suck it up and have all their employees working only 9/10 Monday-Fridays over a two-week period without expecting them to turn up for an extra hour on most of those days, and see whether it made things more or less productive.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I've been doing 9/80's for ten years in the IT department here at the rocket ranch. This schedule is the best schedule I've ever worked in the 30+ years I've been a wage slave, and I've worked a lot of schedules -- split shift, rotating, days, swings, mids - you name it, I've probably worked it. The number one benefit for me is the three-day weekend that 9/80 generates every other week. With some judicious use of vacation time, I can take a lot of on-Fridays off as well, so that I can have even more three-day weekends, or the occasional four-day weekend by taking a vacation day on the Thursday preceding an off-Friday, or on the Monday following one. 9/80s make taking frequent mini-vacations feasible, which definitely keeps my morale high.
On a related note, working in IT means sometimes being available 24/7, but that goes with the territory. I don't think I'm being abused by management when they require me to be available on my off-Friday. As long as the compensation I receive from the company in return for being available is commensurate with the inconvenience of being on call, I have no problem with it. It is in my best interest, and the company's, to try to make sure that my services aren't needed on that off-Friday. The key here, as I see it, is that when I am on call, I get paid the same whether or not I get called in, and as long as that policy remains, I will remain with the company. I've worked on-call for companies that compensated me only if I actually was called in. My employer makes no distinction between being on call and actually being at work, when it comes to compensation. Recognizing that there is an opportunity cost for an employee on call is very important to me.
Factory work, specifically assembly, is very prone to an actual loss of work output with excessive hours. When you're working with a thousand dollars of parts, and a simple mistake can make them into ten dollars of scrap metal, making sure your workforce works as many hours as they can before their error rate begins to spike is crucial.
Some would argue that, in the information age, it's easier to correct the mistakes that overwork & undersleep will lead you to. I'm not entirely sure this is correct... while fixing the extra '$' or misplaced ')' is an amazingly trivial task, finding it can be challenging.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
If someone needs to work 80 hours a week on average then I would say that their life doesn't have much quality to begin with. Unless by "maintain our quality of living" you mean "paying off the luxury goods and services you've purchased". But then again, as your work load stops you from benefiting from them, I seriously doubt that they do much good.
Materialism and all that keeping up with the joneses is a bitch, isn't it?
It's not 80 hours a week! It is an average of 40 hours a week. It is called a 9/80 because you work 80 hours over 9 work days and get the 10th day off.
Offtopic (see below for on topic),
Originally the Dogcow was used for the Cairo font, and later it was printing alignment (amongst other places).
Claris likely got its name from Clarus.
On topic, :D - and that's regular hours, not crunch, which has hit the upper 120s in a week without any slashdot breaks)
My wife had a 9/80 workweek during the summers for several years and loved it. My workweek is more like 10/130 (10/120 if you subtract slashdot