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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.
Get back to work! Those sheep won't shag themselves!
I hope this firm's 4-day work week is an unmitigated success, but this story misses the most important metrics for measuring the success: increased worker productivity, increased retention, various recruitment KPIs, etc. These are the metrics which can show that this plan will work for a larger number of companies. If the only thing that happens is happier employees, it is a failed experiment. Just give every employee a million dollars if you only care about happy employees. If you want to find a way to improve employee well-being while running a sustainable successful business, then you need to real metrics for success.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
In America, we do not strive to have a better life. We feel that at as long as we work as close to death as possible without actually dying, that is just good enough. Politicians should never, ever, tell a corporation what to do or how to treat their employees, since the employees should just be grateful they have a job in the first place.
This mentality is why America is the greatest country on earth. Our hard work has resulted in a strong government, powerful military, world-class health care, an education system second to none, the best infrastructure anyone has ever seen, and with everyone working so hard crime is at an all time low.
I mean really, what relevant data point does America NOT excel in relative to any other country?
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.
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!
At that point you wouldn't be working. Work-Life balance not found. But sure, I'd love a three or two day work week, if I could still maintain my comfortable lifestyle. Why wouldn't we want that?
I must say, it's impressive how conditioned we are to work. Our society's needs are over-filled. We produce too much, and throw away a lot of it. Automation is getting to the point where we could all work less, have more leisure time, and still have all the products we need. Yet when we hear stories like this one, in which people are working less and reporting measurable benefits, the reaction of many is to scoff at it. Why? Do we feel so trapped in our 40+ hour week lives that we resent the people making an improvement? Do we think the only thing of value in our lives is the work we do?
Personally, I work to live. If I could live a fairly comfortable life, like I do now, without working, I would quit my job tomorrow. The only reason I put up with the bullshit I do, day after day, is that it gets me a nice house and a nice car, the ability to travel and eat at restaurants, and all the other nice things money can buy (including a lack of financial anxiety). If I could have all that, with less of the daily bullshit, it would be great. 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.
I understand that our Capitalist and monetary systems require us all to stay on the hamster wheel. That's a whole other discussion. I'm just remarking on the negative reactions of many to the idea that working less would be nice.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.
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.
A major point of this company's change to a 32-hour work week is that overall performance improved. So by working 4 days per week instead of 5, these people are producing more. Pure capitalist ideology should dictate that many more companies make the same change.
Capitalism has nothing to do with societal values of persons.
But then again, our economies (I'm Dutch, I suppose you're from the U.S.) are not capitalist - too much regulation for that, for better or worse, and too many (near) monopolies. And in both our societies, the people that work the most are definitely not the ones considered most valuable. Quite the opposite. It seems those that are valued the most produce the least or are sometimes even counter-productive. They often have the most wealth 'though...
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.