Irish Companies Report Success With Trial of Four-Day Working Week (www.rte.ie) 82
AmiMoJo writes: A research project that saw a four-day working week being trialled across 12 businesses has been deemed a success by both the companies and employees involved. The project, backed by the trade union Forsa and carried out in partnership by Four-Day Week Ireland, UCD and Boston College, examined the financial, social, and environmental impact that a four-day working week would have on businesses and employees in Ireland. Nine of the 12 companies that took part in the six-month trial said they were committed to continuing with the four-day-week schedule. The other three said they were also planning to continue but did not commit to keeping it long-term.
Seven companies provided data on revenue and of those, six reported monthly revenue growth, with one seeing a decline. Two companies that tracked energy usage found reductions. In general, management of the companies were said to have been very pleased with the outcome of the trial in terms of productivity and overall experience. On a scale of 1-10, from very negative to very positive, the companies' average rating for the trial was 9.2.
Seven companies provided data on revenue and of those, six reported monthly revenue growth, with one seeing a decline. Two companies that tracked energy usage found reductions. In general, management of the companies were said to have been very pleased with the outcome of the trial in terms of productivity and overall experience. On a scale of 1-10, from very negative to very positive, the companies' average rating for the trial was 9.2.
Duh (Score:1)
> Two companies that tracked energy usage found reductions.
So you go from 5 days to 4 and you're surprised by energy usage reduction. Duh.
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They moved to 4x8 and left the pay the same.
TFA didn't say that -- do you have another source or personal experience that does? Also, does "left the pay the same" mean salaried workers compensation didn't change, but hourly workers got a reduction in weekly pay, or did hourly workers get a per-hour raise?
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Re: Duh (Score:1)
32-hour work week with same pay (Score:2)
They moved to 4x8 and left the pay the same.
TFA didn't say that -- do you have another source or personal experience that does? Also, does "left the pay the same" mean salaried workers compensation didn't change, but hourly workers got a reduction in weekly pay, or did hourly workers get a per-hour raise?
The actual report [forsa.ie] does say that the experiment was for "reduced work time with no reduction in pay" and "work time declined from 38.3 hours per week to 32.7".
It is also interesting to note that the number of days working remotely dropped from 4.4 to 3.4 days. This means that most workers were already working at home, suggesting somewhat flexible work schedules. It's not clear that these findings would extend to non-remote work or job types that require non-remote work. For example, assembly line workers
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The article was sparse on details, but by following the trail; of links, I came to an actual report [forsa.ie] on the outcome. On page 12, we see that there was a 17% reduction in actual hours worked.
TFA should have linked directly to the report. Perhaps TFS should too.
Goodie (Score:2)
Let's try 3 days a week next.
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So remind me again what working more days gets you?
Something to browbeat those lazy millennials with. /s
At this point, they are what they are. It's their problem, not mine.
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Ok boomer.
Good one.
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So remind me again what working more days gets you?
Money, providing well for my family, respect of my peers, and them knowing I deliver what I promise, satisfaction of a job well done. Going to interesting places and meeting interesting people.
Any other questions?
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So remind me again what working more days gets you?
Money, providing well for my family, respect of my peers, and them knowing I deliver what I promise, satisfaction of a job well done. Going to interesting places and meeting interesting people.
Any other questions?
Yes: what do more working days get you? All you've said is what more money gets you.
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So remind me again what working more days gets you?
Money, providing well for my family, respect of my peers, and them knowing I deliver what I promise, satisfaction of a job well done. Going to interesting places and meeting interesting people.
Any other questions?
Yes: what do more working days get you? All you've said is what more money gets you.
What did you do, read my first two items and get triggered? And then not read the rest, I guess.
Respect of peers is not money. Them knowing I stand and deliver is not money. Satisfaction is not money, and going to interesting places and meeting interesting people on their dime is their dime, not mine, and if I have the piasters to go to interesting places on my own, it's related to money, but it's also priceless.
Meanwhile so many people spend all day at their jerbs, hating it, hating the people they wor
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So remind me again what working more days gets you?
Money, providing well for my family, respect of my peers, and them knowing I deliver what I promise, satisfaction of a job well done. Going to interesting places and meeting interesting people.
Any other questions?
Yes: what do more working days get you? All you've said is what more money gets you.
What did you do, read my first two items and get triggered?
Well, none of the others had anything to do with working more days either. At least the first ones were vaguely related to work.
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Yep...these touchy-feely companies are eventually going to get blown out of the water by actual well managed companies, staffed by quality, full-time employees....rather than a bunch of adult children. FFS, most people don't need a study to establish that employees would be happy to be paid the same, for less effort.
Oh wow, "monthly revenue growth" in a time of recovery, after economic devastation? You don't say!
Re:Goodie (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep...these touchy-feely companies are eventually going to get blown out of the water by actual well managed companies
Considering most of the research points to workers being more productive overall working 30-35 hours per week compared to 40-45, companies moving to a 4 day work week are more likely to blow slow adopters out of the water.
First adopters also have the advantage of hiring better people, since a 4-day work week will be quite the perk. Just like in the argument about working from home vs working at the office, people rarely consider the impact of having better employees even when overall productivity is slightly less. I would take a workforce which is 20% better even if they are each 10% less productive than they could be. The company still wins out with that math.
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You just parroted the same talking points we've all been hearing. Sure a lot of layoffs in tech lately...
Good employees can smell bullshit too...not everyone wants to work with people that are literally, and figuratively, "phoning it in".
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What are you talking about? Tech isn't working 4 day work weeks.
The argument given is that beyond a certain number of hours in a time period, every hour is inherently phoning it in. You can engage with the evidence and call out areas of concern for further analysis -- I find this promising but I'm trying not to succumb to confirmation bias, and there may be alternate interpretations -- but you're just kind of declaring that people are phoning it in, and that's why there are layoffs, and also the above stu
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You just parroted the same talking points we've all been hearing. Sure a lot of layoffs in tech lately...
Good employees can smell bullshit too...not everyone wants to work with people that are literally, and figuratively, "phoning it in".
Check my little BOE calculation in my answer to him. Simplified to be certain, but some truth telling in basic math.
These "Work is sooo haard" whinings have one really big problem.
The workplace and the world is competitive in nature. In the workplace at the company level, there are people who want to work. At the corporate level, it's those touchy feely companies you noted will go out of business soon enough because they can't compete.
And at the world level, there will always be other companies and
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Only in the sense that you're just parroting the opposite viewpoint.
Only the shorter work week has actual evidence behind it, the other has only inertia.
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Yep...these touchy-feely companies are eventually going to get blown out of the water by actual well managed companies
Considering most of the research points to workers being more productive overall working 30-35 hours per week compared to 40-45, companies moving to a 4 day work week are more likely to blow slow adopters out of the water.
First adopters also have the advantage of hiring better people, since a 4-day work week will be quite the perk. Just like in the argument about working from home vs working at the office, people rarely consider the impact of having better employees even when overall productivity is slightly less. I would take a workforce which is 20% better even if they are each 10% less productive than they could be. The company still wins out with that math.
Glad you brought up math! I've got the math and times simplified Seriously back of envelope stuff. Here we go.
I have 100 employees making 100K a year each employee can make 40 whatsits a week. 1 whatsit an hour for 100 employees. 4000 whatsits a week.
We have a market for 4000 whatsits a week. The employees are working at a very efficient pace - much of the work is fixed based on process time.
So on the suggestion that we can cut time to 32 hours and keep the same wages, we do that.
Now the 100 employee
Re: Goodie (Score:2)
Think like an engineer: "Work smarter, not harder."
The key is to find smarter ways to work, creating more output with less time required. Analyze workflows, and remove inefficiencies. Some processes can be improved a lot, some a little. New technology can be invented to solve a problem and create a new efficiency.
If you say "I can't do it", you are right -you can't... maybe someone else will.
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Think like an engineer: "Work smarter, not harder."
The key is to find smarter ways to work, creating more output with less time required. Analyze workflows, and remove inefficiencies. Some processes can be improved a lot, some a little. New technology can be invented to solve a problem and create a new efficiency.
If you say "I can't do it", you are right -you can't... maybe someone else will.
There have been efficiency experts working for a long long time.
Productivity experts as well.
I was making an illustration in simple math, not that efficiency and productivity experts would come in. As well - in that world, they might be able to get rid of a lot of people too But in the case I made, a person who could come in and make a huge percent increase in productivity where the same number of people could cut out 8 hours a week would be a very wealthy person very quickly. Companies rejoice if they
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All of your math assumes someone makes the same number of whatsits per hour when working 40 hours per week compared to 32 hours. There is plenty of research suggesting they don't.
Those whatsits operators may instead make 3800 whatsits when working 32 hours per week, not 3200.
And now that you are offering 32 hour work weeks, you are attracting employees which would have cost you $110k for only $100k.
Now your average workforce is making 4200 whatsits an hour because they are better workers (harder working, sm
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All of your math assumes someone makes the same number of whatsits per hour when working 40 hours per week compared to 32 hours.
My math assumes that a Whatsit takes one person hour to produce. There are plenty of operations that involve creating things that have that aspect of time limitations not related to human hours worked.
There is plenty of research suggesting they don't.
Awesome. Does your research show you that various operations based on physics can be casually ignored? Can forging metals be shortened? Annealing? Smelting? Machining? Give me the cites, and I will make sure that the correct people get them. If you cut me in for say 20 percent, I'll do that.
And then there
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Yep...these touchy-feely companies are eventually going to get blown out of the water by actual well managed companies, staffed by quality, full-time employees....rather than a bunch of adult children. FFS, most people don't need a study to establish that employees would be happy to be paid the same, for less effort.
Oh wow, "monthly revenue growth" in a time of recovery, after economic devastation? You don't say!
And you know they aren't talking about professionals working on a deadline. There is a whole world out there where people have hard deadlines, or if not hard, powerful incentives to get the tasks done on time.
I wonder how I would fit my work into this brave and stunning new finding? I've had tests that ran over 24 hours, followed by write-ups and presentations. I've had meetings that go 8 hours plus. I've had travel where the only thing that working that 32 hour week would accomplish would be to keep me
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Actual adults understand the concept of diminishing returns and that pushing past that point can actually cause negative productivity. It's cranky toddlers that don't know when it's time to rest for a while.
It's in everyone's best interest to not put the cranky toddlers in charge.
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Yep...these touchy-feely companies are eventually going to get blown out of the water by actual well managed companies, staffed by quality, full-time employees....rather than a bunch of adult children. FFS, most people don't need a study to establish that employees would be happy to be paid the same, for less effort.
Oh wow, "monthly revenue growth" in a time of recovery, after economic devastation? You don't say!
A little research shows something very interesting, that might show where this everyone shopuold work 4 days a week, and they will produce as much as if they worked 40 hours nonsense.
https://www.heart.co.uk/lifest... [heart.co.uk]
Now even in todays world, it is hard to justify that men should work 40, but that women are emotionally damaged if they work 40 hours.
So lets make shit up about how 32 hours is the same thing as 40 hors a week.
And women will then not be emotionally damaged.
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It ought to be remembered that the "work-week" was six days up till about a century ago. The five day workweek came along between World Wars. In other words, there's nothing sacred about five days on, two off...
The four day workweek is going to happen. Probably not in my lifetime (I turned 60 while back), but it'll happen.
And likely enough, there'll be a lot of screaming when the subject of a Three Day Work Week comes up (my kids might live to see it, I won't) by and by.
Don't expect it'll matter about
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I personally hated the three day weekend.
It basically felt the same as a 2 day weekend, and I never felt like I made use of the extra day.
Moving to a MT_RF schedule was so much better. Getting every Wednesday off was way more productive and useful than every Friday off.
But working 4 days a week (since 2017) has been great in general compared to 5 days a week.
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It ought to be remembered that the "work-week" was six days up till about a century ago. The five day workweek came along between World Wars. In other words, there's nothing sacred about five days on, two off...
The four day workweek is going to happen. Probably not in my lifetime (I turned 60 while back), but it'll happen.
And likely enough, there'll be a lot of screaming when the subject of a Three Day Work Week comes up (my kids might live to see it, I won't) by and by.
Don't expect it'll matter about much when (or if) the Two Day Workweek is proposed, since the whole concept of work will likely have changed by then....
And then the robots will take over, and 90 percent of humanity will go away as redundant.
Re: Goodie (Score:1)
Let's try 3 days a week next.
What difference would it make??These are the Irish we're talking about.
Q) what's a seven-course meal to an Irishman?
A six-pack and a potato.
/grin
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Let's try 3 days a week next.
What difference would it make??These are the Irish we're talking about.
Q) what's a seven-course meal to an Irishman?
A six-pack and a potato.
/grin
Cymbal crash! 8^)
Really depends on a few variables. (Score:2)
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I was able to structure my work week as four ten-hour days. They were usually Monday to Thursday, but once in a while I'd have to come in on a Friday for one reason or another. I loved it! An extra couple of hours a day at work make no real difference to your social life, and having a three day weekend every week was pure heaven.
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Yes. In another story about this, it was described as a "100-80-100" plan meaning "100% pay for 80% of hours with 100% productivity".
IIRC the 40-hour work week was standardized by Ford after it was determined to be the sweet spot for productivity of automotive factory workers. Most of us don't work in a 1920's car factory so it makes sense that the "same size fits all" method doesn't fit everybody.
Hand-picked companies? (Score:2)
Not much is said about which companies were chosen, or by whom.
Back when I ran a company, a 4-day week would have been possible, but not optimal. Especially towards the end; the employees would have been fine only showing up 4 days per week, so long as management (me) showed up to deal with the phones 5 days a week.
What happened to customers on "day 5"?
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What happened to customers on "day 5"?
Voicemail saying, "Your business is important to us. Please call back during our normal business hours"? A sign on the door saying "Sorry we missed you"? Or maybe just the same thing that happens on Saturday and Sunday, whatever that is.
Re: Hand-picked companies? (Score:1)
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What happened to customers on "day 5"?
Voicemail saying, "Your business is important to us. Please call back during our normal business hours"? A sign on the door saying "Sorry we missed you"? Or maybe just the same thing that happens on Saturday and Sunday, whatever that is.
That only works if the 4 day workweek is imposed on the rest of the country. If I need a product or service on a business day, and your business' doors are closed, I'm going elsewhere. So if you have enough staff, what a 4-day company would have to do is probably split the staff on Monday and Friday.
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What happened to customers on "day 5"?
Voicemail saying, "Your business is important to us. Please call back during our normal business hours"? A sign on the door saying "Sorry we missed you"? Or maybe just the same thing that happens on Saturday and Sunday, whatever that is.
That only works if the 4 day workweek is imposed on the rest of the country. If I need a product or service on a business day, and your business' doors are closed, I'm going elsewhere. So if you have enough staff, what a 4-day company would have to do is probably split the staff on Monday and Friday.
That's what some high-level management types said when the company I work for transitioned to a 9/80 schedule where evertone has the same Fridays off. Turned out to be untrue.
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...transitioned to a 9/80 schedule....
What's a 9/80 schedule? 9 days a week, 80 hours per day?
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...transitioned to a 9/80 schedule....
What's a 9/80 schedule? 9 days a week, 80 hours per day?
LOL. No, it's 80 hours over 9 working days in two weeks, with alternate Fridays off. Everyone has the same Friday off; no overlapping to provide coverage.
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That's commonly known as a 5/4/9 compressed schedule. Like 4/10, an option in some of the US Federal Gov't jobs.
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Or half your employees work Monday-Thursday and the other half Tuesday-Friday.
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That only works if the 4 day workweek is imposed on the rest of the country.
Where outside of China would that even be possible?
If I need a product or service on a business day, and your business' doors are closed, I'm going elsewhere.
Which is why retail business wouldn't adopt this kind of schedule, though specialty shops with exclusive products might be able to get away with it. The businesses in the study were quite small -- less than 50 employees on average. Large retail establishments like department stores are mostly staffed with part time employees in customer-facing positions, so a "reduced hours" schedule wouldn't make sense. Small companies that don't deal with "walk-in" custom
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They go to your competition unless you have them by the balls with a contract. Then they find a new supplier at the end of the contract. Unless service doesn't matter. Depends on what you supply and how special you are.
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Voicemail saying, "Your business is important to us. Please call back during our normal business hours"? A sign on the door saying "Sorry we missed you"?
...and that's how you drive your customers to companies that are actually open for business. You are quite the titan of industry.
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You are quite the titan of industry.
No, but I have enough common sense to understand that businesses that depend on walk-in customers wouldn't adopt this kind of schedule. Really it's kind of odd to think that anyone is suggesting that this would work for all businesses everywhere.
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A sign on the door saying "Sorry we missed you"?
No, but I have enough common sense to understand that businesses that depend on walk-in customers wouldn't adopt this kind of schedule.
So, you've literally suggested handling walk-in customers with door signage on "day 5", when the business is closed...but have now backpedaled and said "No, no no...this isn't for businesses with walk-in customers"
I stand by my previous sarcastic commentary on your business skills.
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I apologize for abusing your inability to detect sarcasm despite your desire to employ it.
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Nah...you weren't being sarcastic.
Better luck next time...
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Of course, depending on the company, just put the customers on hold until Monday. They won't notice the difference.
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Does it say the business went to a 4-day week, or employees did? That's not the same. Half the company could work Mon-Thu and the other half Tue-Fri - no problem for the customer. You can easily fit in 6 days (for shops) or even 7 days (for restaurants etc.) - in fact, these companies have been doing this exact same thing for decades - employees have a 5-day work week, the business is open 6 or 7 days. Not much difference.
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the employees would have been fine only showing up 4 days per week, so long as management (me) showed up to deal with the phones 5 days a week.
LOL. I wonder what companies with 24/7 phone support do? You seem to imply they must find employees willing to work 168 hours per week, but I bet there is some other answer.
But... (Score:2)
consumption of beer increased 50%.
missing critical information (Score:4, Funny)
missing critical information: who are these companies and are they hiring? (bonus: how to move to Ireland)
Clearly Ireland is a left-wing dystopia. (Score:2)
Doesn't transfer to America (Score:2)
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But the question is (Score:1)
End of days (Score:2)
Next up: a 24-hour work week is even better! (Score:2)
I mean, if 32 is better than 40, let's keep a good thing going!
Manufacturing (Score:2)
Harkening back to the days referred to by Trump when he says, "Make America Great Again", people were working 5 regular days in factories and often overtime on the weekends. Production was happening at a breakneck pace, and "mandatory overtime" was in some union contracts. Workers made big piles of money, but having time to enjoy it was a problem sometimes.
So, now, enter a 4 day work week, and how do you keep those machines chucking out hydramatic transmissions 24/7? They pretty much all had 3 shifts g
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There were factories that did a 30/40 model. Pay for forty hours, but only have at most 30 hours. So, shifts were normally six hours not eight.
What happens is the output stays the same (workers pace themselves to do the work they can). However, you can shut down all the machines for six hours a day (assuming three shifts) and save money on those costs. And you get less turnover and so on.
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If you shut down the machines 6 hours a day, you're going to lose money on the sale of the products you do not have because the machines are not making them for 25% of the time. That would not have been acceptable.