16 ms·

Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

giuliomagnifico 3y ago
> They began it as a six-month experiment. But today, 54 of the companies still have the policy. Just over half have declared it permanent, according to researchers with the think tank Autonomy, who organized the trial along with the groups 4-Day Week Campaign and 4 Day Week Global. PDF of the research: https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/making-it-stick_-1.pdf https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/making-it-s...
j45 3y ago
Working four 10 hour days doesn’t seem as much of a stretch compared to 8 hour days.
- figmert 3y ago
  The point of a 4-day work week isn't to cram the 5th day into 4 days, it's completely removing the 5th day, thus working 8 hours every day for 4 days, as opposed to 10 hours for 5 days.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    Yes, also without reducing salaries.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Question: If they removed the 5th work day and the same amount of work got done, then management can say that basically the employees were slacking off for a day a week. And if so, what's stopping them next to increase it back to 5 and chase 5 days worth of productivity out of 5 days/week instead of the previous 4 using the same efficiency gains as performance benchmarks of the 4 days/week?
    - vidarh 3y ago
      They can try. They will fail. If people could maintain that higher performance without suffering at a level people aren't willing to, many would.
    - captainbland 3y ago
      I suppose the same forces that usually prevent a move from a 5 day week up to a 6 day week: it's unpopular and counterproductive. But I wouldn't be opposed to a 4 day week being privileged in law somehow.
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      For knowledge workers, being 100% productive for 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a lie. I don't think anyone can truly deep focus 8 hours a day without burning out at some point.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >For knowledge workers, being 100% productive for 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a lie. Of course, but if this is a known fact, why are we still working 5 days a week as the norm and not 4? Clearly inertia is more important to companies and legislators than facts. Or that probably not all jobs are so leisurely and inefficient, that 5 days of actual productivity can be don in less.
        hananova 3y ago
        Many of us only work 5 days a week officially, there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week. Others will just slow down a little to fill the five days. Yet others will use WFH as an opportunity to do a 4 day work week.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        > there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week Many? I doubt it. Maybe many very privileged tech/big-corp workers in developed rich western countries, but globally that's not that many. Your argument is exactly the argument companies use to justify not going 4 days a week. If workers already have it so good that they have free time to slack off one day out of 5 days per week what's to say they also won't slack off for a day at 4 days per week once that becomes the norm? Don't get me wrong I'd be al for it, but your comment proves many already have it so much better even at 5 days/week.
  - j45 3y ago
    To you. In manufacturing industries this type of schedule is quite common. Not all industries are like tech or will follow it. Companies that won’t do 4 days (32h) per week might do a slightly longer day instead. Maybe 9 hours worked with an hour lunch Being paid for less hours (32) per week for 4 days is fine too.
- huytersd 3y ago
  It’s a 32 hour work week
ActionHank 3y ago
I can't wait for companies to use this as a way to drive down pay
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Great callout for unionizing. Because corporations would extract as much from workers as they could without boundaries. Labor law modifications will help as well, but that takes longer as you wait for old political and business leaders to age out (and take their work ideas with them).
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Unionizing is not enough. 4/day workweek needs to be universally standardized across the OECD/world for it to stick, because whether we like it or not, countries and economies are in competition with each other. And if one factory can churn out X steel widgets and another one only X -20% because they work only 4 days per week, then all the jobs and industry will move to the former as the latter will not be competitive anymore. The 4 day workweek seems to currently work without loosing productivity in wealthy service based economies like Amsterdam, the City of London, etc where a lot of "work" is just Blue Chip companies with theatrics and endless meetings while riding the gravy train of other peoples' productivity from across the globe who don't have access to a 4 day week doing all the heavy lifting(basically economic neo-colonialism), but this obviously can't scale across economies that actually depend on actually designing and making the stuff the wealthy economies speculate on.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      It would be decently hard to find an argument against the 4 day workweek that would not ALSO apply to the 5 day workweek (compared to 6) - perhaps the only real one is "it's what everyone does".
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        But then why work 4 day/week and not 3, when 4 days/week becomes the new normal that burns people out? And then why not work 2 days instead of 3? And so on. How do we decide which model is the sustainable one?
denysonique 3y ago
Every industry is different. Having the same 5-day, 4-day, x-day or x-hour workweek across all industries doesn't make any sense. More diversity in this area could bring a worldwide increase of productivity, wellbeing and result in an economic boost.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  4 day work weeks will be required to compete as structural demographics compresses the working age population [1] [2]. For example, over 1000 school districts in the US have moved to a 4 day week to retain teachers, as they have no other choice [3]. There is evidence it works in many industries (office work, manufacturing, law enforcement, government) [4]; it might not work everywhere, but it can work where it works. There is no reason not to ratchet down the work week as productivity has increased, and most people work to live, not live to work (as indicated by the satisfaction indicators in these 4 day week trials). [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-29/japan-s-tight-labor-market-to-continue-upward-pressure-on-wages https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-29/japan-s-t... | https://archive.today/jXo6a https://archive.today/jXo6a [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/13/uk-worst-performer-g7-workforce-participation-since-covid https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/13/uk-worst-pe... [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=us+school+districts+4+day+week https://www.google.com/search?q=us+school+districts+4+day+we... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261177 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39254455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39254455 (citations)
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  There already is diversity. My in-law works 12 hour days 7 days for a week in mining for instance.
elawler24 3y ago
This is what Keynes predicted might happen - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439#:~:text=Keynes https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439#... That article notes most people can't make enough money from 15 hours of work to save up for retirement. I also wonder if "leisure" has to be redefined, since work and life blend so much online. What does 15 hours of work really mean in a knowledge work job?
- throwaway-123b 3y ago
  For me and I think in the past leisure did not mean mindlesly doing something like nothing, it meant time after misery is gone. I see it as working necessary time at work that you likely do not want to do, like at a factory assembly line or farm, hospital, etc. After that, you can stay at work, but do something else, like engineering at that factory or what else there is you would like to do. This mean less working hours, more people could get a job, it is something like work sharing. It would allow older people to work too, since work day will be lower, it is not like old people can't work at all, they can't work as intensivelly. In the end, those who do not work at the moment, still connsume, they just do not produce what they consume. With smaller work day, they will be able to produce. By work here I mean work and firms that produce things related to "misery gone", not all there is. So if someone would like to work himself 16 h/day, ok, but not in those firms.
  - theendisney4 3y ago
    If everyone worked from 12 till 100 and the midle half of the population makes 24 hours the under and over aged would have to work 12 or so. 2x6 hours, 3x4 or 4x3 maybe 6x2. You learn much more if you start young and keeping the expertice on the floor longer would also help. If we reserve the younglings earnings for specific purchases productivity would increase even more.
- sph 3y ago
  And many cannot save enough money for retirement on 40 hour a week either.
bschne 3y ago
I have some gripes with this group and their publications: - They don't randomize pilots, so any effect you see is likely to be confounded - In this publication, it appears there was ~50% attrition between the initial pilot and the follow-up study — again, a huge source of potential confounding - As another example, in another publication, they showed a plot of GDP per capita against average working hours, and insinuated from the negative relationship that less working hours somehow made workers (causally) more productive, without even hinting at the obvious alternative explanation that people work less as they get more productive because they don't have to work as much to maintain standard of living. I like that things like this are being tried, but I wish the research conducted on it were more intellectually honest and less obviously geared towards pursuing an agenda. The level of analysis here is more like a company marketing whitepaper than anything bordering on scientific. Don't get me wrong, personally I think companies where it's feasible should just define minimum presence where the business needs it and leave it to employees where and when to do the work within those constraints depending on preferences and their situation. I don't have an axe to grind against working less (and in my circles it seems like many people are making this decision by reducing their workload to e.g. 80%, albeit at a corresponding salary cut). But the whole thing just seems a big disingenuous.
- timthorn 3y ago
  They also count charities/non-profits as "companies" - it's unclear to me if they also include local government, but it would be helpful to see the results that for-profit organisations achieved broken out separately.
- nxpnsv 3y ago
  How would you randomize 4 day work weeks in an unbiased way?
  - FredPret 3y ago
    You can't, which makes it difficult or maybe impossible to have hard facts about it
    - 3y ago
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39457728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39457728
HermitX 3y ago
In the movie The Matrix, should those people trapped in the cultivation tanks be considered as having seven days of rest a week?
lamontcg 3y ago
Newsflash: most people working 40 hour weeks aren't working the whole time and spend a lot of time surfing reddit and HN when they're not yapping about sports or their weekends with coworkers.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  At a job I had a few years ago, 95% of my time was spent on reddit/HN. There was corporate in-fighting over who would would be responsible for some work, and my team lost, so my team no longer had any work to do. My manager quit, but his manager didn't actually know what we did on a day-to-day basis so basically left us alone. He was extremely occupied with the work from another one of his teams, anyways. It was actually kind of stressful. I was always waiting for the day that my acting manager would discover that we had no work to do and would eliminate the entire team. I ended up leaving and getting a job where I actually had important (to the company, anyways) work to do at a significantly higher salary.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
perfunctory 3y ago
I personally first tried 4-day workweek about 10 years ago and still love it. That was one of the best decisions I made in my life. Especially in software industry, it's not that hard to arrange I believe. Even easier if we do it collectively. And when more and more people do it and it becomes a norm, the income will just readjust and return to the current levels. But even today, when it's still not a norm, and I have a reduced income compared to my fulltime working peers, I still consider it a bargain. Extra free day is totally worth it. I am basically paying for some extra happiness.
- quaintdev 3y ago
  This is something that will never happen in India because no matter how bad you want 4 day work week theres always someone who will do full 5 days a week and do additional work over the weekend.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Really sucks that economic systems built on the ability to exploit surplus labor can persist. Lots of work left to be done. A bug to be patched.
    - SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
      The hard part is convincing the people who see that bug as a feature
  - whatwhaaaaat 3y ago
    Sounds like the US should introduce similar legislation to what India did with the on soil stuff.
  - jart 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - u02sgb 3y ago
brightball 3y ago
Counterpoint: When hiring people reasonably early out of school, they often just want the additional hours. I know of a business in my area that tried the 4 day work week and they ended up having to open on Fridays for half a day because people just wanted more hours (and money). Without it, the same people were just getting second jobs.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  This isn't for people how are hourly, it's for salaried employees.
- viscountchocula 3y ago
  Presumably the salaried people weren't clamoring for more hours?
- ajsieidjsni 3y ago
  [dead]
- esafak 3y ago
  Give people the option to choose how much they want to work, and adjust the compensation.
  - brightball 3y ago
    That’s what ended up happening. People either wanted as much as possible or as little. 4 days didn’t really matter.
ysofunny 3y ago
I prefer a 6 hour workday 5 days a week but I'll take a 4 day workweek (I assume 8 hours a day)
- whycombagator 3y ago
  Why not both?
  - ysofunny 3y ago
    it's from 40 hours a week, down to 32, then to 30. doing both means a 24 hour work week...
    - 1123581321 3y ago
      You really shouldn't be satisfied until your work days and work hours per day have an H-index of one. It's the opposite of academic publishing.
nly 3y ago
Tech salaries aren't good enough in the UK to make this feasible for most of us.
- CapeTheory 3y ago
  Once you get into the top tax band, the 20% cut in base pay only corresponds to an ~8% cut in take-home pay - a pretty good deal as far as I'm concerned. The problem is that employers who pay this much tend to be large US companies and therefore not well equipped to deal with requests for flexible working. Fortunately the law here means that such requests can't be dismissed out of hand, but unfortunately that doesn't mean HR is obligated to make such requests easy for managers to go along with.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    Yes, though you could also put that money into your pension.
    - nly 3y ago
      Yep, 20% in to pension would be huge
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
I used to do 3 12 hour days and it was glorious.
- switch007 3y ago
  Did you have to convince an employer you’d be productive for 12 hours?
lzmibes 3y ago
Employer and employee should be free to negotiate whatever arrangement is mutually agreeable. I don't think there needs to be any more to it than that
- malux85 3y ago
  Except most employers just do what everyone else does - and one might say “the market forces them to” but that’s total nonsense. Look at remote work, it was fairly uncommon in programming and very uncommon outside of programming. Then everyone was forced to do it with Covid and now it’s much more common because it works. Everyone was free to negotiate at any time before and after Covid, but anything that was even mildly radical would be met with a hard no. Simply because nobody else does it that way. I agree that it shouldn’t be mandated with laws, but I don’t agree that it should be left totally up to employer / employee because the power balance of negotiation still sits with the employer too much. Unfortunately I don’t know what the solution is, we need some external force that’s not as firm as a law to push a large number of companies to 4 days, what could that be I wonder… ?
  - lzmibes 3y ago
    Did remote, partially remote, 3, 4 and 5 day weeks before COVID. It was always there. Did you ask? Do you need a union to ask for you?
    - piva00 3y ago
      No one said there wasn't, what was stated is that it wasn't common. Great for you to manage to find those gigs, it's not representative of the more general trend. It was always there, for a very few select opportunities. I only got 2 remote gigs for very early stage startups without an office before COVID (and I've been in this industry for 20 years), after it's been 70% of offers from recruiters telling me "we're remote friendly". Do you understand the difference? If you don't like unions, don't join one, you're free to do it, as others are free to associate and be part of one. If you don't like a unionised place you can always move to another job, it will always be there for you, no worries.
zooq_ai 3y ago
This study is a perfect fit the HN crowd who won't question the methodology and incentive systems because it fits their narrative. Of course employee are going to report happy. What next? a study saying "Employees love more money for the same work?"
- beastman82 3y ago
  Sadly it's a reflection of this reporting. They quote exactly 1 of these leaders and couch the failures with suggestions of a failed methodology.
- harikb 3y ago
  Just curios, why single-out HN crowd though???. In a typical 'HN crowd' comment, it is usually about a persona that think 'tech is great' or 'tech can solve all problems', not this particular characterization of 'worker vs management'.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    The HN crowd tends to have unrealistic views of money and employment, probably partly because software development is an unusual job - extremely well paid for relatively little work and responsibility - and partly because the kinds of people on HN are surprisingly naïve when it comes to economics (and also people; but that's not surprising). Some examples: * Never-ending optimism about UBI, despite the maths clearly not working. Kind of similar to this really. * Expecting salary to exactly match value - i.e. to get the same pay remote working no matter where you live. The number of people here that fundamentally don't understand that salary is a supply/demand negotiation is weird. And they really don't think it through to the obvious conclusion if it did happen - they'd get paid the same as people in Eastern Europe or India. I think a 4-day work week could eventually happen, but HN types like to pretend it will make people more productive which it absolutely won't. It probably won't reduce productivity to 80%. More like 90%. But it will happen as a cultural shift; not because it increases productivity.
- leoff 3y ago
  > Of course employee are going to report happy isn't this also about the firms loving it? If it's a win/win for both sides, what's the problem?
heikkilevanto 3y ago
Union meeting 2124: "Mr. President, do we really have to work every Wednesday?"
- op00to 3y ago
  If we get so efficient that we can meet all our needs working once every 14 days, spending the rest of our time exercising and enjoying life, why is that bad?
- Chinjut 3y ago
  Union meeting 1924: "Mr. President, do we really have to work every Saturday?"
jjcm 3y ago
There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it. What remains to be seen though are if the efficiency gains are good enough to justify less hours. Are employees more productive? That's the question that remains to be answered or objectively measured here. Less burnout and better mental health means higher quality work for sure, but is output as a whole better with a 4 day work week versus a 5 day work week? That's what shareholders will care about more than anything else.
- bb123 3y ago
  I’d happily take a 20% pay cut for a 4 day work week, if it was offered.
  - totololo 3y ago
    I think that's common in Switzerland. They call it 80% contracts.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      Similarly in Norway.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    I would too but only after I raise my base rate by 25%. If I'm on a salary and have project deadlines it's the same thing anyway.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    It's "sort of" what I've done, only last time I changed jobs I told recruiters it'd take 20%-30% more for me to come into the office full time, and pro-rated below that.
statquontrarian 3y ago
I've been doing a 20-hour 3 day work week (50% of total pay) for a few years now and I love it. I'm outperforming a full-time colleague in total output. Edited to add that the 3 day work week totals 20 hours.
- op00to 3y ago
  What does your full time coworker say about that? Are you concerned at backlash or retaliation?
  - statquontrarian 3y ago
    I didn't mean to give the impression that I was boasting or that I bring this up with him or my management, but just that there's a somewhat objective relative measurement that shows that it's possible to keep up high output for some jobs. I was surprised that my _total_ output stayed so high after transitioning from 40 to 20 hours. No backlash or retaliation so far after more than 2 years.
    - op00to 3y ago
      I didn’t mean to insinuate you were boasting! I apologize if that was the case. I do my required work in 20 hours most weeks. I spend the rest of the 40 hour work week resting, learning, and working on myself. I am careful not to publicize this because I am concerned at backlash from colleagues who find they have to spend more time than me. People work at different paces and provide different value to the company for many reasons. I may be efficient and effective, but I tend to burn out faster, hence the rest time.
      - statquontrarian 3y ago
        I think that's a good strategy.
- glenjamin 3y ago
  If you're producing more than a full-time colleague, does the 50% pay cut seem a bit harsh?
pythonguython 3y ago
I work in contracting, so this could never work. At the end of the day, many Americans sell time. There’s no incentive for my organization to produce more in less time.
m3kw9 3y ago
They love it because while everyone works 5 days they work 4. Once everyone has 4 they will be back to square one just like everyone is now (5 days a week). Humans are like that, they compare what others have to see if they have it better. Where do you think we got the term, grass is always greener on the other side?
- yCombLinks 3y ago
  3 days off is significantly different than 2. You get a day where you didn't work yesterday and you don't work tomorrow.
kkfx 3y ago
Unpopular opinion: 4-days workweeks is used as a scam to force people in the office instead of full-remote. That's is. Since https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/ https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/ "productivity" in not a thing really interests companies, they are much more interesting in having an effective grip on their workers, with remote workers the sole grip is fair conditions and nice work environment. They do want to keep the geographical grip and various other small potatoes grip on workers. Here the popularity of shorter workweeks, of course "if you go in the office", meaning if you live nearby. I can work 6 days a week, no issue, but if the job can be done from remote it MUST BE done from remote.
spoonjim 3y ago
4 day week is very stupid. You can only do a few hours of good programming a day and throwing away one of them is idiotic
Xenoamorphous 3y ago
I think future generations will look back and find unfathomable that we spent the best part of 5 days a week (if not more) working. At least I hope so.
- tr3ntg 3y ago
  Agreed. For all the talk about “AI can make you more efficient,” which it has, in my personal experience, there should be no excuse for worldwide standardization of 4 days over 5 days.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  I'm starting to think most people have an instinct to work. People thought the dream was to become post-scarcity. But instead of taking steps towards that, people just keep working regardless and then find themselves with huge excesses of money and nothing better to spend it on than oversized cars etc.
kypro 3y ago
And here I am sad that no one will let me work weekends in IT.
pitahat 3y ago
I think the biggest thing we often miss when we talk about the 4-day work week is that most employees would not mind doing condensed hours i.e. longer hours everyday but then work fewer days. It doesn't have to be straight cut to 32 hours etc
- iknowstuff 3y ago
  Data on “most”?
booleandilemma 3y ago
Why wouldn't they love it? They should try a 3-day workweek, they'll probably love that even more.
Jedd 3y ago
> One important finding, researchers say, is that there is no one-size-fits-all recipe when it comes to the four-day workweek. Didn't we already know this is the case with a five-day workweek? Five days is such an arbitrary situation, obtained only through a LOT of effort by a LOT of people to reduce that down from a 'perfectly normal and reasonable' six-day workweek. We're persistently lumbered by the inertia of pervasive systems we inherited, and the assumption that what we have is what we should have.
- theendisney4 3y ago
  Haha, ik wanted 5 days but got only 3, it took me a long time to figure out why i wanted 5, it seemed so self evident. It was every bit as dumb as you make it out to be. A coworker did eventually get 5 days, after 6 months he said, what have i done, My life is just work now. I remember working 5, i made more money. It was just as easy to spend as it is now. Nothing changed.
danielfoster 3y ago
I was excited about this until I read that companies had introduced efficiencies such as “monk mondays” to get more done in less time. Couldn’t a company do this, keep a five-day work week, and see an increase in productivity?
renewiltord 3y ago
It's the UK. No one works on Fridays anyway. Haha.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jkmcf 3y ago
I actually like working, minus the business/management BS. Current $job is very good. Would love a 5h/day expectation, though. I'd work 7pm to midnight and be more productive than 9-5.

> They began it as a six-month experiment. But today, 54 of the companies still have the policy. Just over half have declared it permanent, according to researchers with the think tank Autonomy, who organized the trial along with the groups 4-Day Week Campaign and 4 Day Week Global. PDF of the research: https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/making-it-stick_-1.pdf https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/making-it-s...

j45 3y ago

Working four 10 hour days doesn’t seem as much of a stretch compared to 8 hour days.

figmert 3y ago
The point of a 4-day work week isn't to cram the 5th day into 4 days, it's completely removing the 5th day, thus working 8 hours every day for 4 days, as opposed to 10 hours for 5 days.
- pjerem 3y ago
  Yes, also without reducing salaries.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Question: If they removed the 5th work day and the same amount of work got done, then management can say that basically the employees were slacking off for a day a week. And if so, what's stopping them next to increase it back to 5 and chase 5 days worth of productivity out of 5 days/week instead of the previous 4 using the same efficiency gains as performance benchmarks of the 4 days/week?
  - vidarh 3y ago
    They can try. They will fail. If people could maintain that higher performance without suffering at a level people aren't willing to, many would.
  - captainbland 3y ago
    I suppose the same forces that usually prevent a move from a 5 day week up to a 6 day week: it's unpopular and counterproductive. But I wouldn't be opposed to a 4 day week being privileged in law somehow.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    For knowledge workers, being 100% productive for 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a lie. I don't think anyone can truly deep focus 8 hours a day without burning out at some point.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >For knowledge workers, being 100% productive for 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a lie. Of course, but if this is a known fact, why are we still working 5 days a week as the norm and not 4? Clearly inertia is more important to companies and legislators than facts. Or that probably not all jobs are so leisurely and inefficient, that 5 days of actual productivity can be don in less.
      - hananova 3y ago
        Many of us only work 5 days a week officially, there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week. Others will just slow down a little to fill the five days. Yet others will use WFH as an opportunity to do a 4 day work week.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        > there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week Many? I doubt it. Maybe many very privileged tech/big-corp workers in developed rich western countries, but globally that's not that many. Your argument is exactly the argument companies use to justify not going 4 days a week. If workers already have it so good that they have free time to slack off one day out of 5 days per week what's to say they also won't slack off for a day at 4 days per week once that becomes the norm? Don't get me wrong I'd be al for it, but your comment proves many already have it so much better even at 5 days/week.
- j45 3y ago
  To you. In manufacturing industries this type of schedule is quite common. Not all industries are like tech or will follow it. Companies that won’t do 4 days (32h) per week might do a slightly longer day instead. Maybe 9 hours worked with an hour lunch Being paid for less hours (32) per week for 4 days is fine too.
huytersd 3y ago
It’s a 32 hour work week

ActionHank 3y ago

I can't wait for companies to use this as a way to drive down pay

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Great callout for unionizing. Because corporations would extract as much from workers as they could without boundaries. Labor law modifications will help as well, but that takes longer as you wait for old political and business leaders to age out (and take their work ideas with them).
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Unionizing is not enough. 4/day workweek needs to be universally standardized across the OECD/world for it to stick, because whether we like it or not, countries and economies are in competition with each other. And if one factory can churn out X steel widgets and another one only X -20% because they work only 4 days per week, then all the jobs and industry will move to the former as the latter will not be competitive anymore. The 4 day workweek seems to currently work without loosing productivity in wealthy service based economies like Amsterdam, the City of London, etc where a lot of "work" is just Blue Chip companies with theatrics and endless meetings while riding the gravy train of other peoples' productivity from across the globe who don't have access to a 4 day week doing all the heavy lifting(basically economic neo-colonialism), but this obviously can't scale across economies that actually depend on actually designing and making the stuff the wealthy economies speculate on.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It would be decently hard to find an argument against the 4 day workweek that would not ALSO apply to the 5 day workweek (compared to 6) - perhaps the only real one is "it's what everyone does".
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      But then why work 4 day/week and not 3, when 4 days/week becomes the new normal that burns people out? And then why not work 2 days instead of 3? And so on. How do we decide which model is the sustainable one?

denysonique 3y ago

Every industry is different. Having the same 5-day, 4-day, x-day or x-hour workweek across all industries doesn't make any sense. More diversity in this area could bring a worldwide increase of productivity, wellbeing and result in an economic boost.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
4 day work weeks will be required to compete as structural demographics compresses the working age population [1] [2]. For example, over 1000 school districts in the US have moved to a 4 day week to retain teachers, as they have no other choice [3]. There is evidence it works in many industries (office work, manufacturing, law enforcement, government) [4]; it might not work everywhere, but it can work where it works. There is no reason not to ratchet down the work week as productivity has increased, and most people work to live, not live to work (as indicated by the satisfaction indicators in these 4 day week trials). [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-29/japan-s-tight-labor-market-to-continue-upward-pressure-on-wages https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-29/japan-s-t... | https://archive.today/jXo6a https://archive.today/jXo6a [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/13/uk-worst-performer-g7-workforce-participation-since-covid https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/13/uk-worst-pe... [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=us+school+districts+4+day+week https://www.google.com/search?q=us+school+districts+4+day+we... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261177 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39254455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39254455 (citations)
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
There already is diversity. My in-law works 12 hour days 7 days for a week in mining for instance.

elawler24 3y ago

This is what Keynes predicted might happen - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439#:~:text=Keynes https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439#... That article notes most people can't make enough money from 15 hours of work to save up for retirement. I also wonder if "leisure" has to be redefined, since work and life blend so much online. What does 15 hours of work really mean in a knowledge work job?

throwaway-123b 3y ago
For me and I think in the past leisure did not mean mindlesly doing something like nothing, it meant time after misery is gone. I see it as working necessary time at work that you likely do not want to do, like at a factory assembly line or farm, hospital, etc. After that, you can stay at work, but do something else, like engineering at that factory or what else there is you would like to do. This mean less working hours, more people could get a job, it is something like work sharing. It would allow older people to work too, since work day will be lower, it is not like old people can't work at all, they can't work as intensivelly. In the end, those who do not work at the moment, still connsume, they just do not produce what they consume. With smaller work day, they will be able to produce. By work here I mean work and firms that produce things related to "misery gone", not all there is. So if someone would like to work himself 16 h/day, ok, but not in those firms.
- theendisney4 3y ago
  If everyone worked from 12 till 100 and the midle half of the population makes 24 hours the under and over aged would have to work 12 or so. 2x6 hours, 3x4 or 4x3 maybe 6x2. You learn much more if you start young and keeping the expertice on the floor longer would also help. If we reserve the younglings earnings for specific purchases productivity would increase even more.
sph 3y ago
And many cannot save enough money for retirement on 40 hour a week either.

bschne 3y ago

I have some gripes with this group and their publications: - They don't randomize pilots, so any effect you see is likely to be confounded - In this publication, it appears there was ~50% attrition between the initial pilot and the follow-up study — again, a huge source of potential confounding - As another example, in another publication, they showed a plot of GDP per capita against average working hours, and insinuated from the negative relationship that less working hours somehow made workers (causally) more productive, without even hinting at the obvious alternative explanation that people work less as they get more productive because they don't have to work as much to maintain standard of living. I like that things like this are being tried, but I wish the research conducted on it were more intellectually honest and less obviously geared towards pursuing an agenda. The level of analysis here is more like a company marketing whitepaper than anything bordering on scientific. Don't get me wrong, personally I think companies where it's feasible should just define minimum presence where the business needs it and leave it to employees where and when to do the work within those constraints depending on preferences and their situation. I don't have an axe to grind against working less (and in my circles it seems like many people are making this decision by reducing their workload to e.g. 80%, albeit at a corresponding salary cut). But the whole thing just seems a big disingenuous.

timthorn 3y ago
They also count charities/non-profits as "companies" - it's unclear to me if they also include local government, but it would be helpful to see the results that for-profit organisations achieved broken out separately.
nxpnsv 3y ago
How would you randomize 4 day work weeks in an unbiased way?
- FredPret 3y ago
  You can't, which makes it difficult or maybe impossible to have hard facts about it
  - 3y ago

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39457728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39457728

HermitX 3y ago

In the movie The Matrix, should those people trapped in the cultivation tanks be considered as having seven days of rest a week?

lamontcg 3y ago

Newsflash: most people working 40 hour weeks aren't working the whole time and spend a lot of time surfing reddit and HN when they're not yapping about sports or their weekends with coworkers.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
At a job I had a few years ago, 95% of my time was spent on reddit/HN. There was corporate in-fighting over who would would be responsible for some work, and my team lost, so my team no longer had any work to do. My manager quit, but his manager didn't actually know what we did on a day-to-day basis so basically left us alone. He was extremely occupied with the work from another one of his teams, anyways. It was actually kind of stressful. I was always waiting for the day that my acting manager would discover that we had no work to do and would eliminate the entire team. I ended up leaving and getting a job where I actually had important (to the company, anyways) work to do at a significantly higher salary.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

perfunctory 3y ago

I personally first tried 4-day workweek about 10 years ago and still love it. That was one of the best decisions I made in my life. Especially in software industry, it's not that hard to arrange I believe. Even easier if we do it collectively. And when more and more people do it and it becomes a norm, the income will just readjust and return to the current levels. But even today, when it's still not a norm, and I have a reduced income compared to my fulltime working peers, I still consider it a bargain. Extra free day is totally worth it. I am basically paying for some extra happiness.

quaintdev 3y ago
This is something that will never happen in India because no matter how bad you want 4 day work week theres always someone who will do full 5 days a week and do additional work over the weekend.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Really sucks that economic systems built on the ability to exploit surplus labor can persist. Lots of work left to be done. A bug to be patched.
  - SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
    The hard part is convincing the people who see that bug as a feature
- whatwhaaaaat 3y ago
  Sounds like the US should introduce similar legislation to what India did with the on soil stuff.
- jart 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - u02sgb 3y ago

brightball 3y ago

Counterpoint: When hiring people reasonably early out of school, they often just want the additional hours. I know of a business in my area that tried the 4 day work week and they ended up having to open on Fridays for half a day because people just wanted more hours (and money). Without it, the same people were just getting second jobs.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
This isn't for people how are hourly, it's for salaried employees.
viscountchocula 3y ago
Presumably the salaried people weren't clamoring for more hours?
ajsieidjsni 3y ago
[dead]
esafak 3y ago
Give people the option to choose how much they want to work, and adjust the compensation.
- brightball 3y ago
  That’s what ended up happening. People either wanted as much as possible or as little. 4 days didn’t really matter.

ysofunny 3y ago

I prefer a 6 hour workday 5 days a week but I'll take a 4 day workweek (I assume 8 hours a day)

whycombagator 3y ago
Why not both?
- ysofunny 3y ago
  it's from 40 hours a week, down to 32, then to 30. doing both means a 24 hour work week...
  - 1123581321 3y ago
    You really shouldn't be satisfied until your work days and work hours per day have an H-index of one. It's the opposite of academic publishing.

nly 3y ago

Tech salaries aren't good enough in the UK to make this feasible for most of us.

CapeTheory 3y ago
Once you get into the top tax band, the 20% cut in base pay only corresponds to an ~8% cut in take-home pay - a pretty good deal as far as I'm concerned. The problem is that employers who pay this much tend to be large US companies and therefore not well equipped to deal with requests for flexible working. Fortunately the law here means that such requests can't be dismissed out of hand, but unfortunately that doesn't mean HR is obligated to make such requests easy for managers to go along with.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  Yes, though you could also put that money into your pension.
  - nly 3y ago
    Yep, 20% in to pension would be huge

ThrowawayTestr 3y ago

I used to do 3 12 hour days and it was glorious.

switch007 3y ago
Did you have to convince an employer you’d be productive for 12 hours?

lzmibes 3y ago

Employer and employee should be free to negotiate whatever arrangement is mutually agreeable. I don't think there needs to be any more to it than that

malux85 3y ago
Except most employers just do what everyone else does - and one might say “the market forces them to” but that’s total nonsense. Look at remote work, it was fairly uncommon in programming and very uncommon outside of programming. Then everyone was forced to do it with Covid and now it’s much more common because it works. Everyone was free to negotiate at any time before and after Covid, but anything that was even mildly radical would be met with a hard no. Simply because nobody else does it that way. I agree that it shouldn’t be mandated with laws, but I don’t agree that it should be left totally up to employer / employee because the power balance of negotiation still sits with the employer too much. Unfortunately I don’t know what the solution is, we need some external force that’s not as firm as a law to push a large number of companies to 4 days, what could that be I wonder… ?
- lzmibes 3y ago
  Did remote, partially remote, 3, 4 and 5 day weeks before COVID. It was always there. Did you ask? Do you need a union to ask for you?
  - piva00 3y ago
    No one said there wasn't, what was stated is that it wasn't common. Great for you to manage to find those gigs, it's not representative of the more general trend. It was always there, for a very few select opportunities. I only got 2 remote gigs for very early stage startups without an office before COVID (and I've been in this industry for 20 years), after it's been 70% of offers from recruiters telling me "we're remote friendly". Do you understand the difference? If you don't like unions, don't join one, you're free to do it, as others are free to associate and be part of one. If you don't like a unionised place you can always move to another job, it will always be there for you, no worries.

zooq_ai 3y ago

This study is a perfect fit the HN crowd who won't question the methodology and incentive systems because it fits their narrative. Of course employee are going to report happy. What next? a study saying "Employees love more money for the same work?"

beastman82 3y ago
Sadly it's a reflection of this reporting. They quote exactly 1 of these leaders and couch the failures with suggestions of a failed methodology.
harikb 3y ago
Just curios, why single-out HN crowd though???. In a typical 'HN crowd' comment, it is usually about a persona that think 'tech is great' or 'tech can solve all problems', not this particular characterization of 'worker vs management'.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  The HN crowd tends to have unrealistic views of money and employment, probably partly because software development is an unusual job - extremely well paid for relatively little work and responsibility - and partly because the kinds of people on HN are surprisingly naïve when it comes to economics (and also people; but that's not surprising). Some examples: * Never-ending optimism about UBI, despite the maths clearly not working. Kind of similar to this really. * Expecting salary to exactly match value - i.e. to get the same pay remote working no matter where you live. The number of people here that fundamentally don't understand that salary is a supply/demand negotiation is weird. And they really don't think it through to the obvious conclusion if it did happen - they'd get paid the same as people in Eastern Europe or India. I think a 4-day work week could eventually happen, but HN types like to pretend it will make people more productive which it absolutely won't. It probably won't reduce productivity to 80%. More like 90%. But it will happen as a cultural shift; not because it increases productivity.
leoff 3y ago
> Of course employee are going to report happy isn't this also about the firms loving it? If it's a win/win for both sides, what's the problem?

heikkilevanto 3y ago

Union meeting 2124: "Mr. President, do we really have to work every Wednesday?"

op00to 3y ago
If we get so efficient that we can meet all our needs working once every 14 days, spending the rest of our time exercising and enjoying life, why is that bad?
Chinjut 3y ago
Union meeting 1924: "Mr. President, do we really have to work every Saturday?"

jjcm 3y ago

There's no doubt that there's a benefit to the employee, but for corporations to adopt this there has to be a measurable benefit to the company as well. I do think there is one clear benefit as measured in the article - employee retention. It's an extremely strong incentive to stay with the current company, and domain knowledge gained over decades really is a competitive advantage if your employees commonly have it. What remains to be seen though are if the efficiency gains are good enough to justify less hours. Are employees more productive? That's the question that remains to be answered or objectively measured here. Less burnout and better mental health means higher quality work for sure, but is output as a whole better with a 4 day work week versus a 5 day work week? That's what shareholders will care about more than anything else.

bb123 3y ago
I’d happily take a 20% pay cut for a 4 day work week, if it was offered.
- totololo 3y ago
  I think that's common in Switzerland. They call it 80% contracts.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    Similarly in Norway.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  I would too but only after I raise my base rate by 25%. If I'm on a salary and have project deadlines it's the same thing anyway.
- vidarh 3y ago
  It's "sort of" what I've done, only last time I changed jobs I told recruiters it'd take 20%-30% more for me to come into the office full time, and pro-rated below that.

statquontrarian 3y ago

I've been doing a 20-hour 3 day work week (50% of total pay) for a few years now and I love it. I'm outperforming a full-time colleague in total output. Edited to add that the 3 day work week totals 20 hours.

op00to 3y ago
What does your full time coworker say about that? Are you concerned at backlash or retaliation?
- statquontrarian 3y ago
  I didn't mean to give the impression that I was boasting or that I bring this up with him or my management, but just that there's a somewhat objective relative measurement that shows that it's possible to keep up high output for some jobs. I was surprised that my _total_ output stayed so high after transitioning from 40 to 20 hours. No backlash or retaliation so far after more than 2 years.
  - op00to 3y ago
    I didn’t mean to insinuate you were boasting! I apologize if that was the case. I do my required work in 20 hours most weeks. I spend the rest of the 40 hour work week resting, learning, and working on myself. I am careful not to publicize this because I am concerned at backlash from colleagues who find they have to spend more time than me. People work at different paces and provide different value to the company for many reasons. I may be efficient and effective, but I tend to burn out faster, hence the rest time.
    - statquontrarian 3y ago
      I think that's a good strategy.
glenjamin 3y ago
If you're producing more than a full-time colleague, does the 50% pay cut seem a bit harsh?

pythonguython 3y ago

I work in contracting, so this could never work. At the end of the day, many Americans sell time. There’s no incentive for my organization to produce more in less time.

m3kw9 3y ago

They love it because while everyone works 5 days they work 4. Once everyone has 4 they will be back to square one just like everyone is now (5 days a week). Humans are like that, they compare what others have to see if they have it better. Where do you think we got the term, grass is always greener on the other side?

yCombLinks 3y ago
3 days off is significantly different than 2. You get a day where you didn't work yesterday and you don't work tomorrow.

kkfx 3y ago

Unpopular opinion: 4-days workweeks is used as a scam to force people in the office instead of full-remote. That's is. Since https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/ https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/ "productivity" in not a thing really interests companies, they are much more interesting in having an effective grip on their workers, with remote workers the sole grip is fair conditions and nice work environment. They do want to keep the geographical grip and various other small potatoes grip on workers. Here the popularity of shorter workweeks, of course "if you go in the office", meaning if you live nearby. I can work 6 days a week, no issue, but if the job can be done from remote it MUST BE done from remote.

spoonjim 3y ago

4 day week is very stupid. You can only do a few hours of good programming a day and throwing away one of them is idiotic

Xenoamorphous 3y ago

I think future generations will look back and find unfathomable that we spent the best part of 5 days a week (if not more) working. At least I hope so.

tr3ntg 3y ago
Agreed. For all the talk about “AI can make you more efficient,” which it has, in my personal experience, there should be no excuse for worldwide standardization of 4 days over 5 days.
globular-toast 3y ago
I'm starting to think most people have an instinct to work. People thought the dream was to become post-scarcity. But instead of taking steps towards that, people just keep working regardless and then find themselves with huge excesses of money and nothing better to spend it on than oversized cars etc.

kypro 3y ago

And here I am sad that no one will let me work weekends in IT.

pitahat 3y ago

I think the biggest thing we often miss when we talk about the 4-day work week is that most employees would not mind doing condensed hours i.e. longer hours everyday but then work fewer days. It doesn't have to be straight cut to 32 hours etc

iknowstuff 3y ago
Data on “most”?

booleandilemma 3y ago

Why wouldn't they love it? They should try a 3-day workweek, they'll probably love that even more.

Jedd 3y ago

> One important finding, researchers say, is that there is no one-size-fits-all recipe when it comes to the four-day workweek. Didn't we already know this is the case with a five-day workweek? Five days is such an arbitrary situation, obtained only through a LOT of effort by a LOT of people to reduce that down from a 'perfectly normal and reasonable' six-day workweek. We're persistently lumbered by the inertia of pervasive systems we inherited, and the assumption that what we have is what we should have.

theendisney4 3y ago
Haha, ik wanted 5 days but got only 3, it took me a long time to figure out why i wanted 5, it seemed so self evident. It was every bit as dumb as you make it out to be. A coworker did eventually get 5 days, after 6 months he said, what have i done, My life is just work now. I remember working 5, i made more money. It was just as easy to spend as it is now. Nothing changed.

danielfoster 3y ago

I was excited about this until I read that companies had introduced efficiencies such as “monk mondays” to get more done in less time. Couldn’t a company do this, keep a five-day work week, and see an increase in productivity?

renewiltord 3y ago

It's the UK. No one works on Fridays anyway. Haha.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jkmcf 3y ago

I actually like working, minus the business/management BS. Current $job is very good. Would love a 5h/day expectation, though. I'd work 7pm to midnight and be more productive than 9-5.