Slashdot Mirror
New Zealand Firm's Four-Day Week an 'Unmitigated Success' (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The New Zealand company behind a landmark trial of a four-day working week has concluded it an unmitigated success, with 78% of employees feeling they were able to successfully manage their work-life balance, an increase of 24 percentage points. Two-hundred-and-forty staff at Perpetual Guardian, a company which manages trusts, wills and estate planning, trialled a four-day working week over March and April, working four, eight-hour days but getting paid for five. Jarrod Haar, professor of human resource management at Auckland University of Technology, found job and life satisfaction increased on all levels across the home and work front, with employees performing better in their jobs and enjoying them more than before the experiment. Work-life balance, which reflected how well respondents felt they could successfully manage their work and non-work roles, increased by 24%. In November last year just over half (54%) of staff felt they could effectively balance their work and home commitments, while after the trial this number jumped to 78%. Staff stress levels decreased by 7 percentage points across the board as a result of the trial, while stimulation, commitment and a sense of empowerment at work all improved significantly, with overall life satisfaction increasing by 5 percentage points.
A 4 x 8 hour schedule. I work 32 hours a week and could never go back. My day off is Wednesday, a tactical decision which preserves most if not all holidays, and more importantly gives me a maximum of 2 consecutive days of work. Highly recommended if you can pull it off.
For some time now, I have a "full time job" that I do four days a week and I am treated as a full-time employee, and I do some work for a nonprofit on the fifth day. I have to agree that I feel my work performance is not worse and I am much happier about the job as well. In many jobs, condensing the work from five to four days helps focus and removes slack...
I'd bet continuous regular stress (five days a week) is more harmful than shorter lengths of slightly higher stress (four days a week).
#DeleteFacebook
There are plenty of studies already, including from Ford's own studies that led to the standard 40 hour work week, that peak productivity is reached around 30 hours per week.
I'd probably even give up a bit in order to work less. It's not laziness. It's the recognition that I want more out of life than being someone's employee.
But then you'd have less value to society. As long as we're capitalistic-focused, your value in society is in what you produce and what you consume. Do less of either, and you're a less valuable person to society.
Combine that with a puritanical mindset that god rewards the just and punishes the unjust, and you've got the wonderful world-view of working you described. It's going to be very hard to overcome that in a majority of the population, which would be necessary to make the societal shift to working less.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Well, if four days is a bad idea, why not a six day week? What makes five days the perfect amount of time to work for all jobs?
The answer is that there is no optimal number that's right for all jobs. If you're a dairy farmer the cows have to be milked seven days a week. If you're a paper pusher, that next piece of paper can usually wait longer than a cow.
My own observations of desk workers is that the longer they spend at the desk, the larger proportion of time they spend at non-productive tasks. I've known people who habitually put in sixty hours a week who never are working very hard. Is the long week the cause of low work intensity, or vice versa? I'd say both: it's a vicious circle.
If you made no other changes, reducing a desk worker's week from five days to four would make him less productive, but probably not 20% less productive. But an intelligent plan wouldn't leave things to chance; you'd set a pace of work that is sustainable for four days but not for five. You'd disallow a lot of time-wasting activities that are tolerated now because the work week has plenty of hours in it.
Would that work for every job? Of course not. But there's no reason to think that five eight hour days is optimal for every job or person either.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'd probably even give up a bit in order to work less. It's not laziness. It's the recognition that I want more out of life than being someone's employee.
But then you'd have less value to society. As long as we're capitalistic-focused, your value in society is in what you produce and what you consume. Do less of either, and you're a less valuable person to society.
Actually, that’s not true. At some point, you’re working too much to consume things. Having more time off means you can travel and consume goods and services all over the world. Admittedly, a single day won’t do that, but it still means you have more time to consume.
Also, you’re incorrectly assuming that the product of your work is the most valuable output that you can produce. For most of us in software, our work will become less valuable over time as technology changes, and will slowly be replaced by someone else’s work. So if we have any creative hobbies that could produce something that has lasting value, such as music, art, poetry, or prose, then our potential value to society is being squandered by spending all day five days per week working in our primary jobs, and we would contribute more to society by working less so we can work more, so to speak.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Why should your value to society be judged on whether or not you're someone else's employee? If I had a whole day to do anything I wanted, I'd write more, releasing more stories for people to read. I'd do more freelance, still making web sites/applications, but as my own employee. I'd do more with my kids, raising them to be even better members of society. I'd spend more time with my wife, perhaps "consuming" more during days out together. I might even try making my own little company if I had a good enough idea for one. My value to society shouldn't be judged on whether I'm currently at work or in a store buying something.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yeah, next we should try a three-day week. Then imagine how much better a two-day week will be! When we get to zero, the work-life balance will be perfect!
Well actually, around here people like police, firefighters, certain public works employees work something like 3 on/3 off, 4 on/4 off with 12 hour shifts. Yes, when you are working you are working and not much else, but in the end, when you include vacation, stat holidays, etc, you have significantly more days off in the year than you have work days.
I'm sure it is not for everyone, but all the people I know who do this love it.