Four-day work week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
91 replies, posted
Wouldn't it be easier to do a fixed 4 in 4 off? We did that and it was... doable, but steady
i would LOVE to work 4/10 shift as i already work 60-70 hours in a 5 day work week but knowing my company we would switch to 4 days a week and i would still be working 60-70 hours at 17-18 hours per day....
I disagree, I did management in retail for 2.5 years and I had 4 ten hour shifts (plus however long I decided to stay extra to help) and honestly it was the greatest schedule I've ever had. The ten hr shifts are a breeze when you know you've got a nice long weekend to totally disconnect from the stresses of work. Half a week later you come back in totally refreshed and ready to deal with the next half a week, rinse repeat.
The unofficial motto of that place seemed to be "Easy?! PFFFT!"
The plant seemed to work much better when it was on a 5-day/3-shift schedule, with weekends for preventative maintenance and cleanup for anybody who wanted more hours. Then they decided "Hey, 24/7 should increase productivity!", and lo, we had a shit-ton of downtime because shit kept breaking, sometimes spectacularly.
Doesn't trying to get this to stick mean convincing people close to retirement that they've basically been wasting a massive chunk of their lives?
I can't see it happening no matter how many generations we go through outside of some utopia enabling breakthrough.
I don't see why that's relevant at all?
Well it is
Nah, I work in a warehouse in which a few months ago we went to 12 hour shifts. 4 teams, day and night shifts. 2 teams work Sunday through Tuesday and the other 2 teams work Thursday through Saturday, and beginning and end of weak teams switch off every other Wednesday. With some fancy footwork on logistics and such all the work of 3 teams was split evenly and still gets done with 4 teams of less people compared to when we did 8 hour shifts so they didn't even have to hire anyone extra. So basically we work the same amount of hours per pay period we used to, just in a fewer amount of days and therefor we actually have much more concentrated time off per week. It's nice.
Quit and find something else, even if the job doesn't seem as great on paper. If there's one thing that's kept me excelling in the workplace, it's the fact that me and my bosses know I'm here on MY terms and any mistreatment is gonna result in them simply not having workers.
I get work life is tough but none of us are slaves. I've lived off 50 dollars for 2 months between jobs, slept in cars and what have you. It's not glamorous but there is a serious benefit to knowing in your head that you as a human c
ontrol your life, not your company
Citation needed.
Care to elaborate?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwz7YN1AQmQ
huh last place I was in was the exact same thing, but did things backwards, well backwards in the sense that it got better
4 days for 2 shifts
12 hours a day, and after those 4 days, the other teams would change with us.
It felt good to be at home for 4 days straight, but 12 hours a day was way worser than anything else. Everyone wanted regular 5 days a week.
Reminds me of the theory of bullshit jobs.
crapitalism is outdated and treats humans like mere resources
I work 3 day weeks (12 hour shifts) Sometimes I'm off 3 days in a row and I actually get bored.
I became an independent contractor last fall, cut my hours in half (~20 hours a week) and easily became 1.5-2x more productive. I firmly believe our society should move in this direction.
Actually it works better there than in office work. Gives the body more time to recover from the manual labor.
Source: I worked for Penske on 4/10 scheduling and it was far less physically demanding than the 5/6 scheduling I'm doing now with PFG.
I'm pretty sure I've read research similar to this dating back to the 70s. It's not going to change, the way all sorts of other well documented, discussed and obvious flaws in business, managerialism, and employment have not changed for the better but actively gotten worse. If you don't think it could possibly get worse, take a look at work in japan or hong kong and then kill yourself because thats the global trajectory for the bulk of jobs.
What ever happened to work smarter not harded
well,, these practices are already changing and i experience in my workplace, so please withdraw your absolute statement
What about critical industries, healthcare, law enforcement, fire fighters etc... I can't see 4 day weeks becoming reality for them short of a massive hiring spree. Will those people be paid even more since the whole unsociable hours concept would expand hugely? Or some people will work more for less? Obviously I understand this is more a deal with your employer and not every job will be able to have these perks but I think a lot of people underestimate how much would be affected by changes like these.
I mean, they all worked on the weekend. If the 5 day work week didn't affect those services, neither will a 4 day work week. They'd just have to rework their shift system, none of those people work 7 days weeks currently.
Sorry if I was misunderstood, I didn't imply these jobs work 7 day weeks, they provide a 7 day service and if the work week is shortened officially then more people will have to be employed or paid overtime/unsociable hours pay. Since most of these jobs are in public service where there isn't much appetite to pay more or employ more people (with pretty much all services having huge rota gaps, employment and retention issues and pay freezes) I don't see how this will be possible for these workers.
Of course everyone would want their surgeon to be well rested and working 4 days instead of 6 in a row, but they also want their operation to be done as soon as possible which is only possible if you have even more workforce.
I mean, that's more of a wider problem regarding austerity and the public sector being cut than anything specific to a 4 days week. It's not like the governments that are cutting those services would implement legislation on 4 days week in the first place.
If a more progressive government were to implement it, however, I don't think it would be impossible to apply it to such public services. It would be a 25% increase in salary overall, not that much when you consider that public servants wages is only a portion of government spending.
I'm in construction too and I have to disagree. I find most days and employee work hours to be totally expendable. There's days where rain or snow randomly and entirely halt concrete pouring, membraning, sealant application. If deliveries are late, they can, and I quote, "fuck off and wait until next week." It's not up to individual workers to pick up the slack for late deliveries.
Obviously a 4 day work week would generally slow progress as there'd be fewer work days in the year, but that's sort of the point of a 4 day workweek, your trading some abstract notion of "societal productivity" for worker health and well-being. TBH I'd rather have 4 busy and productive work days than 5 days where a bunch of tired workers basically stand around all day taking smoke breaks and generally fucking the dog.
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