Workers at companies that tested out a 4-day workweek are happier and more efficient — and firms made more money. One lawmaker says it’s ‘here to stay.’::The latest data shows that workers and companies prosper under a four-day workweek. Rep. Mark Takano wants to make it law.
I’ll believe the “it’s here to stay” shit when I see it. From where I sit I only see managers that want people in cubicles again 5-6 days a week while they can work remotely or hybrid.
Yeah. It’s like trying to convince a toddler to eat less sugar for their own health.
There are some good ones out there. Where I work, they believe me to be irreplaceable. The truth is that I’m sure there are thousands of competent engineers that could replace me, just not for my salary, and certainly not also willing to move to a small town. They don’t want to pay full market rate for what I do, but they convince me to stay on by letting me work my own hours, full-remote, great vacation and benefits, etc. Ive been so productive since leaving office work that the entire organization now has remote work policies.
They’ve figured out that it’s cheaper to just make your employees not hate their lives and I’m absolutely here for it.
Up next: companies continue 5-day workweeks anyway, because they’re not even rational in their mandates. (See also: forces RTO).
This. I’ve been at my job for a year as a remote out of state employee. All of the sudden, they decided we needed weekly team meetings and virtual team building when we had none before. My job is not collaborative, everyone on the team has a different role and most things can be handled over email/teams. I like my coworkers, but we’ve been working great together without all this crap. Even my manager doesn’t like it but it’s being forced on her from higher up, half the time she doesn’t have anything to share at the team meeting that couldn’t have been a one sentence email.
Edit to add: oh and these weekly team meetings have cameras on required, when before any of the few meetings we had never required this. Seems like one of the higher up read some article about ‘building virtual teams’ and went to town without actually stopping to think whether it fits.
I’m hoping my CEO wants to try this out, as we’re one of the few companies in my area that’s permanently WFH. However it might be quite difficult as we’re a project based shop so having 4 day workweek might present some difficulty because we still need to match our clients work hours T_T
The major problem is to overcome the “More work hours = more production” mindset. In subdeveloped worlds, this is so engraved in society that news like that seems “communist propaganda”
The problem is separating out the work that does rely on hours worked vs ones that don’t.
Running a stamping machine? Yeah, your run time is going to be pretty much proportional to your output.
Working a desk job doing research and generating reports? The better you are at it, the more you can do, and eventually you just outrun the workload. Then you shit twiddling your thumbs for no reason.
This. It almost only applies to desk jobs. Production workers can’t just work a day less and keep the same output, and if they can’t do it, people like me who are responsible for keeping the production running as part of their job(electrician in my case) also can’t work a day less.
If companies wanted to do this, they’d have to hire more workers to give everyone a 4 day week. But all this would do is create more costs for the company
And not even all desk jobs. My job is supporting a manufacturing client with their imports. Until both them and the courier/shipping lines decide to change to a four day work week, I’m going to need to be ready to field urgent HTS and document requests, even though I work a remote desk job.
Depends at what level in IT. Definitely lessens as you go up. I remember being a grunt and working 50 hour weeks and being oncall, scared to leave my house for fear I would get called. Now after 20 years of experience I only get called in when stuff is REALLY broken and have a lot more free time to better myself. I use down time to learn new skills or work in my homelab.
As everything can be implemented in a good or bad way. As a worker, I may prefer to have my weekly activities “distributed” in more days because making everything fit into a shorter amount of time does not allow me to deal with interruptions or unforeseen accidents. Having less time would give me more anxiety, rather than less. Instead of imposing schedules by law, allowing everyone to choose would be better. Plus, why is everything so politicized?
Sounds like the coworker is stretched too thin if they’re working while on ‘vacation’.
“more free time for the smelly peasants? never!”
- some rich capitalist
I mean, did this really need testing to find it would work?
Working fewer days is obviously going to make us happier and, as a result, work better.
Yeah but the cherry on top is that, for example computer guys&gals will produce better on a 4 day week than on a 5 day week! It’s not like being “on” @80percent makes you produce 90% of what you did when being “on” @100%. It’s giving you a day totally free (same salary, not longer days) and you produce at 105%.
Work@home have also shown more productivity.
That’s why we start to wonder why the hell middle management wants us back in the office, at a maximum hours a week.
They probably are bored all alone, and are devoid of empathy, that’s my take anyways!
