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Analysis of Four-Day Working Week Trial by a New Zealand Financial Services Company Finds Staff Were Happier and 20% More Productive (theguardian.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report: The founder of one of the first big companies to switch to a four-day working week has called on others to follow, claiming it has resulted in a 20% increase in productivity, appeared to have helped increase profits and boosted staff wellbeing. Analysis of one of the biggest trials yet of the four-day working week has revealed no fall in output, reduced stress and increased staff engagement, fuelling hopes that a better work-life-balance for millions could be in sight. Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a five-day to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay. Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in the total amount of work done, a study of the trial released on Tuesday has revealed.
The trial was monitored by academics at the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology. Among the Perpetual Guardian staff they found scores given by workers about leadership, stimulation, empowerment and commitment all increased compared with a 2017 survey. Details of an earlier trial showed the biggest increases were in commitment and empowerment. Staff stress levels were down from 45% to 38%. Work-life balance scores increased from 54% to 78%. "This is an idea whose time has come," said Andrew Barnes, Perpetual Guardian's founder and chief executive. "We need to get more companies to give it a go. They will be surprised at the improvement in their company, their staff and in their wider community."
The trial was monitored by academics at the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology. Among the Perpetual Guardian staff they found scores given by workers about leadership, stimulation, empowerment and commitment all increased compared with a 2017 survey. Details of an earlier trial showed the biggest increases were in commitment and empowerment. Staff stress levels were down from 45% to 38%. Work-life balance scores increased from 54% to 78%. "This is an idea whose time has come," said Andrew Barnes, Perpetual Guardian's founder and chief executive. "We need to get more companies to give it a go. They will be surprised at the improvement in their company, their staff and in their wider community."
I've done 4x10's - and loved it. And, for an hourly position it would work.
However, for Exempt - you would sign up... then some bozo management type would still expect you to work on your 'day off'.
I'm not a 1000 person study; but back when I worked 4 ten hour days instead of 5 8 hour days I used to get a lot more work done. I can confirm this is true from my study of one.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Less time wasted due to boredom / burnout. Not that difficult to comprehend, koko.
Wasn't New Zealand offering free flights to people interested in working there?
Work contracts to fit into the time we give it.
would move to 4 12,5 hour work days ao their expectations of 50 hours a week from salaried workers could continue.
The place before that I was working 60-80 hours in a 6 day work week, but at least I got overtime.
That's how I read this.
This is all about treating employees as adults, it's all about trust.
Shock/Horror - when you entrust employees they respond favourably, who would've thought? /s
The other ways to accomplish work/home life balance is to allow working from home where feasible, with no limits at all.
If someone wants to work from home for two weeks straight and they are still accomplishing the tasks they have been assigned, or the tasks they have assigned themselves, then surely this is a positive?
This is one aspect from science fiction that is now entirely possible and is, in fact, very prevalent in the tech sector - that you can work effectively from anywhere, that physical location should never be a barrier.
Obviously this isn't going to work for every sector, but 4 day weeks will for pretty much all industry.
There's so many other hidden benefits from this looser work/home life balance approach - less traffic for instance.
Bring it on.
If you need to staff a phone 5 days a week, going to 4 days makes no financial sense, you're just a warm body we want to keep in the seat as long as possible for the least amount of money.
For people that have a career, where work-life is important this may be of benefit, but then again, you're already salaried and the job market (at least right now) is wide open. I understand the stress, but people have to get more used to asking what THEY want out of a job.
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result in another 30% more productivity ? :-)
I'm guessing those that are happier would have either Mon or Friday off, so as to always have a 3x day weekend.
Kinda sucks for those a bit, that they'd have to break their weekends and weekday off to be off Sat-Sun, have to work Mon and Friday and be off Tues or Wed or Thurs.
How do they pick who gets lucky and gets the perpetual LONG weekend set ups?
What happens when a holiday occurs on your week day off? Do you get double pay for it?
While it sounds interesting, I'd like to hear the details on things like this.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
But this study wasn't about moving around the 40-hour-week (actually 37.5 hour week in NZ due to lunch). It was literally just dropping one day from the schedule, and moving to a 30-hour-week (4x7.5).
And weekly productivity went up 20%. Which, given the 20% reduction in hours, means hourly productivity went up ~50%.
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Ninety years ago, companies were figuring this out.
Nixon ran with it 65 years ago.
But, what a CRAAZY idea, am I right?
Still work 5 days a week. But extend the week, by executive order, to 9 days. Make the weekend 4 days.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Partyday
Funday
Sunday
Then go back to work again.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Well, it might be all & well for the staff at that company to be happier, less stressed, healthier, & more productive but what about their souls? If those workers are denied the opportunity & support they need in order to toil relentlessly & arduously so that they can be better people, aren't they being condemned to an afterlife of eternal damnation? God will surely smite this evil company!
P.S. I'm reliably informed (Poe's Law) that humour must be accompanied by a smiley face in case someone thinks I'm an extremist nut-job :)
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
20% of 40 is 8 so basically, the company gets nothing out of this for salaried employees. For hourly employees, the company gets 8 hours of work for free.
The reporter (or a non-technical person) said 20%. They wanted to say it came out to a wash, and they knew it was a 20% reduction, so they thought 20% improvement. (And the wash probably had some fairly large error bars)
Note, I messed up elsewhere in the comments and thought it was a 20% weekly improvement.
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In America cheap work visas mean you have an unlimited access to fresh employees. No need to worry about burnout, long term health or well being.
Also, a certain percentage of the populace _is_ able to be productive for extended hours. 40, 50, 60 even 80. Yeah, there aren't a lot of them, but when you're drawing from a pool of over a billion workers you've got plenty.
More than anything else this is why us tech folk can't compete with India. Their middle class is as large as our entire country. It's just a numbers game at that point.
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I think the summary writer meant something along the lines of "even though you'd expect cutting work time by 25% would result in a reduction in productivity, it did not."
The article states that productivity went up 20% and profits also increased.
This isn't really surprising. Lots of research shows that 40 hours a week is maximum sustainable effort, when you're building bombs as fast as you can to avoid being invaded by Nazis (seriously). Intellectual work seems to be less than that.
It's also not surprising that companies aren't "all over this." Management is a highly conservative discipline and people have really weird ideas about work. Yours is currently one of the first listed comments on this story, but I'm sure scrolling down will reveal a lot of people who simply refuse to believe this.
I"m guessing they can't let EVERYONE work only Mon-Thurs.....they have to stagger everyone's week day off, won't they?
I would think having half of workers work Mon-Thu and the other half Tue-Fri, with more meetings on Tue-Thu, would work best in most office environments. For some roles like customer service where having half the staff take off Mon&Fri wouldn't work, they could implement an every other week 3-day weekend rotation. People may get extra PTO whenever their day off lands on a holiday, but otherwise that should be an easy problem to work out.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The eight-week experiment...
Smaller companies experimenting with the four-day week have found performance has been better in the first few weeks as excitement about the project took hold, before falling slightly.
A 240 person staff is pretty small, and eight weeks (over Christmas no less) isn't enough time to draw any conclusions.
The productivity increase isn't any surprise though. The employees are offered the day off *if* they could get the same amount of work done in a shorter time. Of course people will respond to a reward like that...for a while. Makes you wonder what would happen if people were offered a 20% pay increase for working five days per week but getting 20% more work done.
This idea is of course really similar to Google's 10% do what you want idea - except it's specific to a day. One day a week, you can work on whatever you want.
Maybe that means you just catch up on professional reading or courses. Maybe it means you work on a side project. Maybe it even means you do regular work that you just really want to move along more.
I feel like having this option or break, would have nearly as much of a benefit for happiness and productivity as just a day off , and additionally give the company a huge unexpected and unquantifiable return. It would also build company loyalty a little more than just a mere day off.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Pay attention to what Nixon actually said: Vote Republican in the upcoming election and the economy will be so good you'll soon be working 4 day weeks.
Well the gop plan is an 3.9 day 3 10 hour + 1 3.9 day. So we get an full week but don't have give out any of the Full time worker perks.
So who'd be lying and to what end?
"If you tell everyone you are happy, and fudge the numbers to look productive, then you can continue to get an extra day off every week".
You really can't see an incentive to lie?
What is kinda strange is the math... So they say no loss in productivity (as opposed to a gain) and they furthermore talk about a 20% increase in productivity.
The summary says "20% gain in productivity" and "same amount of work gets done". So they are getting 20% more done each day they work, with makes up for the day they don't work.
In the Netherlands here you're just out of luck if a free day falls in the weekend. In many countries it's like that actually. Sometimes the employers get lucky. Sometimes the employees.
No one needs to be lying. It could just be the Hawthorne effect at play. They'll want to make sure to observe this over a longer period to determine whether the productivity gains are merely a short-lived effect or if they stick around because they really are the result of a shorter work week and employees having more energy or less stress due to having additional free time.
Hold on they 20% more productive while working 20% less sorhey where 50% more productive the tine rhey actuslly where at work,if this is true (I mght have missed somrhing), this is a rather imoressive result give the emploies a15 percent pay increae ( compared tonwat they got working 5 day week and have a nice boost to your net result. And ohe ea an emploee that just got a 15% income increese and an aditional day off (or 5 shorter work days) ar less lightly to quit so reducesd cost in reqruring + retraining replacements later.
Well, the economy is much better now than in the 50s. The GDP is about 60 times higher now than it was in 1950. So where is the 4 days week?
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Management is a highly conservative discipline and people have really weird ideas about work.
I really think it comes down to what management gets or think they get out of it.
I work for a small, owner-managed company who's the typical SMB entrepreneur who thinks that everybody loves the company and gets as much out it as he does. I think this is one part of the explanation.
Another is people in jobs where they're not specifically entrepreneurs, but where there is a real or perceived benefit from making their subordinates work harder. Bonus, promotion, prestige, fill in the blank.
After that are people that are just workaholics, who like whatever is they do enough that they can't understand people who don't want to work that hard.
"I really think it comes down to what management gets or think they get out of it."
Yes. Like I said, people, including management, have weird ideas about work.
Studies have also shown that workaholics are often less productive than more well-balanced people, and are more likely to burn out. Some people need a manager to force them to take a break. Some of those people are managers themselves.
Shifts are still 8 hours, but you have four per week instead of five. Neither four nor five goes into seven equally.
I've never seen what you're talking about actually happen.
The law in New Zealand is quite clear. If a holiday falls on the weekend, it moves to Monday or Friday (depending).
It doesn't have to be a lucky few with perpetual 3-day weekends. They could cycle the days off so that everyone got three day weekends 40% of the time and a midweek day off the rest of the time. Or they could allocate everyone to have Mondays or Fridays off unless someone had a strong preference for one of the in-between days, and take a bigger productivity hit on those days. Holidays already have law governing how to allocate a different day off when it falls on a non-working day, so that isn't difficult to manage either.
We work four ten's at our place.
Forty hours pay.
Three day weekend...
You stagger who gets a particular day of the week off, then.... Use that to say, "Oh, the employee that handles that is OFF TODAY, so we'll have to postpone doing anything about that issue. And another person that is key to that project will be off tomorrow, so it could be next week before we can take care of your issue."
"We need to get more companies to give it a go."
I'm sure every manufacturing plant would love a 20% reduction in weekly output. True to most financial/economic 'genius' they fail to see how this simply cannot apply to other industries.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm in the U.S. and if a holiday happens on the weekend the day off is moved to Friday or Monday.
That's almost certainly the standard if any union is involved and for decent companies even without a union.
The difference here is that we don't have to try to negotiate with our employer. We also have 20 days paid annual leave by law.