I had a four day week at a job several years ago - it was the bomb. I cried when I had to leave.

>Workers will need to create the services and products in four days that they were creating in five, to make enough money to pay a full week's wages.

Or it could be a mix of productivity gains and slightly smaller profits.

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Many companies could benefit from this rather than having employees sit there and waste time. Measure concrete work done, not time spent at the office, and you'll be surprised.

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I feel like the natural conclusion to a change like this in the US would be companies seeing how productive people can be in 4 days, and adding back a 5th day to increase profit even more.

For the sake of getting adoption I wouldn't mention that option!

You have to keep in mind that lots of companies already do that and they mostly use it as a way to pay you less for their own billable hours instead of like as general overhead for the business like workers are usually paid as on payroll.

They could try, but once ppl see it work they probably won't go back.

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I work at a place that does bi-weekly scheduling. (2-2-3) Doesn't matter if the pay is good and the job is usually low-stress, I can never reliably say "I'll be there on Saturday" unless I do the "A-B-A-B-A" in my head to figure out if I work that weekend or not and that pushes me into depression so bad whenever I look at r/LFG or see someone in a discord chat looking for players.

Edit: Okay, potentially being bad at mental math made at least 20+ people fairly upset, apparently. The issue isn't "how will I ever know when I work?!" it's "We hang out on the weekend, can you make it?" - "Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no." - "Oh, well we'll find someone who can say ' yes, yes, yes, etc.'"

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You can set up your calendar on your phone to reflect that and know your schedule into eternity. That should help with any math-based depression.

Honest, if child care was more affording in the USA, most of us would be happy with 4x10h

These firms weren't doing 4 10s. They were working regular hours 4 days a week. Getting paid the same money for 80% of the hours.

It's not just affordability, but also finding a daycare whose hours fit. I'd do 4x10s, but most of the day ares in the area are open for only 10 or 11 hours a day (especially since COVID), so once you add in overhead like a commute and getting your hours to align with theirs, their working hours simply don't work. Instead, I'm on a 9/80 with every other Friday off, which is the next best thing and is still a thousand times better than a traditional 5x8 schedule.

I used to work at a lumber mill Mon - Thur 10 hour shifts it was great back then.

4.25 an hour on the other hand not so much

They've been around for sixty years or more. Grandaddy did that in the early sixties.

Yeah… I read…

Ok my bad. I assumed this was reddit so the article wasn't read, just the headline.

But a lot of people do generally think when they say 4 day workweek that they mean 4x10s. Always want to make sure it's clear what this study is really trying for.

numbers

bum me out

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We just need to switch to the 4 day week. No hand wringing or productivity talk, just make the switch. Productivity has skyrocketed over the years while wages have not.

Back in the 8th grade I had a teacher that used to be an accountant and he was promised the same 4 day work week when computers came around. Never happened.

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We used to have 6 work days and this hasn't happened yet. So there's little reason to think it would now.

What's worse is that unlike back then, quite a few white collar jobs feel like they're not just 7 day jobs but on-call 24/7 jobs.

My brother is working on union contracts for his department. There is no real money for CoL raises, so he is suggesting that they move to a 4/32 work week. That effectively gives them a nice raise for the per hour workers.

Could probably buy a nice house on that wage still.

When my grandma found out how much money I was making in my 20s she thought it was ridiculous, because Grandpa and her only made $2 an hour! While I was making $50.

Meanwhile I couldn’t qualify for a mortgage. While their first house was like $10,000 lol.

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Yeah it feels like there haven't been enough raises for CoL anywhere yet. Guess I just have to leave to get the raise I need.

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4x10 sucks if you have kids, and not just the daycare part. You don't really get to see them during the week. You're 5th day, they're in school. It's great for childless people. Really expands how much you can travel. But mandatory 10 hour days really wear you down.

Retail. If you're a good worker with open availability you'll often work 32-37 hours a week 4-5 days a week as a part timer.

Fortunately in this trial it was 4x8 still with no pay reduction

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I work at a hospital albeit in the IT department

I can only see it working if they shuffle things and hire more people to cover the off days. Like have some of us do Mon to Thurs and the rest Tues to Fri.

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I’m on 7 days a week - retired .

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CoL raise? What is that?

My wife was just offered a job doing phone support. They told her training pay was $12.75. That hit like a brick to the face. When I started doing IT, it was phone support. Training pay was $12.50 an hour. 25 years ago.

While the study was 4x8, let me just add how awesome 4x10 is with work from home.

Roll out of bed at 6:30, take a shower, put on a t-shirt and jeans, at work by 7. Maybe put on a button down if I have a client call. Start dinner at 4:00. Get it in oven, go work some. Dinner done at 5. Answer emails while hanging out with family/friends.

Goddamn I'd rather do 10 hours of work that way than 8 hours of work where I dressed up and spent 45 minutes commuting each way.

Sweet. My generation will enjoy retirement when we fucking die.

When we had shift bids, the 4x10 winner would sell their shift to the highest bidder. It was nuts. One dude offered $2500 cash to a buddy of mine.

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Retail is structurally incapable of becoming piecemeal pay, which is what was originally described. Far too much of it is impossible to track or standardize time frames for, such as aiding customers in finding things or cashiering.

I work 4x10. It's not as great as it seems from the outside. My first day off is completely lost to just recovering and catching up on the things around the house I used to do during the week after work.

$50 a hour in your 20s? That’s more than the average American makes. You probably got denied a loan because you had no credit.

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It's just the natural progression towards "you can sleep when you're dead" I've been watching my entire adult life, nbd

Its not same pay because its deliberately done tto avoid offering benefits.

Retail is scheduled as such since at 36.5 hrs/week you are entitled to benefits. Therefore no one gets more than 36 hours a week 🙃

> Measure concrete work done, not time spent at the office, and you’ll be surprised.

Half my team would be gone lmao.

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Guess it really depends on what you do.

But that's logical and makes sense, we can't have that.

The IRS considers people employed an average of 30+ hours per week to be employed "full time".

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I work 4 days a week, and I feel like it makes me more productive and a better worker.

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I’m all for 4 day work weeks where it’s 32 hours. Fitting 40 hours into 4 days, while still better than 5 days, still kind of defeats the purpose.

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The idea of 100% pay for 80% of the work is idiotic. Take it out of the context of the article and really listen to that statement. Think about this in terms of stock traders or financial analysts a second. It's absurd, there is no free lunch. A reasonable way of managing a so-called "4 day work week", would be to have the office open 5 days a week and only require 32 hours assuming a 40 hour week. This would only work for salaried professionals in certain lines of work though. Show me a company cutting hourly workers hours by 20% and increasing wages by 25% to compensate and I'll be impressed. It's bold for a company to commit to encouraging their employees to work no more than 32 hours a week on average for the same pay. I only skimmed the article, so I'm not sure how it played out exactly.

I worked in software consulting for a decade and billed up to 40k a month at the end. I financed a bunch of people for years. I made an excellent wage myself, but it was insane how much more the people who actually did the work could have had if it weren't for the 40% systematically slacking off.

I eventually quit and joined my largest customer at a rate almost as if I was a freelancer. Because that company could see who did the work.

I have a very physical job, yes, but I know from my college days that 10 hours of mental work is just as draining in a different way.

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My employer did this and within a month asked us to do 36 hours so only a 10% reduction in total hours. When it was time to negotiate yearly salary increase, we were reminded we work 20% less days and there would be no increase. Meanwhile inflation is 10%+? Competitor across the street is poaching all the good people with a 20% raise.

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That's just insanity. People at the top keep giving themselves bigger and bigger salaries though.

Yeah, her 2$ was probably equivalent to you making around 20$, except at the same time a house worth 18k in 1953 would have been about 377k today if housing had kept 'as low' as inflation.

Instead it's more like the little hut with almost no yard worth 6k then is what's costing 350k today... And all the services have exploded as well.

TBH this heavily depends on both parent's schedules. We have 4x10s and a lot of ppl just swap the dropoff or pickup. There's a lot of 5-6am ppl who leave early enough for the afternoon pickup while dodging rush hour. There's also the 8-10am start crew who do the drop off and leave during or after rush hour. We're pretty flex though so some ppl also just work partially form home then drive in later. IE take some morning meetings, drive in after rush hour. Maybe even dial in while driving. A lot of ppl been doing that as it lets them convert commute to work hours and makes for way better work/life balance.

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But then they'll see productivity plateau and there won't be a difference in output between 4 day and 5 day work weeks. Only difference being it costs more time and money to make people work that extra day for no extra productivity.

So many employers want to have their cake and eat it too. Completely absurd and they know it.

> Far too much of it is impossible to track or standardize time frames for, such as aiding customers in finding things or cashiering.

For the very little guy sure, but bet your ass that Walmart and others absolutely do this. How many retailers are left that are not under an umbrella of a megacorp?

Case in point: Target. They have(had?) specific second-scale timing for cashiers. 8 seconds to scan an item, with additonal time "granted" for larger items. Then more time-accounting for the customer payment phase (Hope granny had her change ready, or you're getting a flag). And in response, you have forum post after forum post of employees trying to figure out the best way to game the system so they don't get flagged for a slow customer ('cause it's the cashier's fault) like starting card payment and cancelling before choosing another, or voiding an item to scan it again to buy another 8-second window.

In an office though 20% of your day is fuck off politics and coffee talk. I hate it but how else is the CEO going to hijack my day while I was taking a piss with his personal laptop problem?

So, for me, 4x10 gives me an incredibly productive day.

I’d much rather do 4x8 and never have to go into an office.

I'm old.

Back in the day, a lot of companies allowed workers to do 9x9 (work 9 hour days and have every other Friday off) in the summer. I lived in a miserably hot city where people really wanted to get out for the weekends.

That was ideal for me.

Lmao the politics and small talk is the one thing I don't miss about office jobs. I'm terrible at small talk and not interested in office politics. Those were probably the two things most draining for me for the time I worked in one.

4x8 work from home is absolutely the dream though. I'd save so much money on gas with no commute, and always have snacks on hand!

I can't speak to Target, but the only thing that was tracked when I was a cashier at Walmart was how many credit cards I got people to sign up for each day. As a floor associate, I wasn't tracked on tasks in a way that could be paid piecemeal, because all the tasks on even our daily to-do list were so wildly different in scope. Finishing putting out new stock is a very different thing from logging the Apple inventory serial numbers and both are very different from resetting the movies and games sections every week for new releases.

What you describe for Target explains why I stopped shopping there even before the prices got too high. Getting rushed through check out is a shit level customer experience, the tracking program was absolutely some number focused idiot's idea. Anyone who worked in and cared about customer service would have seen the downfall of it immediately.

well ya, I was like 23, nobody has much credit history at that age. So they required a 20% down payment, and when cheap peace of shit houses are 400K, it’s hard to just come up with 80K+ out of thin air, while also having to pay rent. Which wasn’t cheap since I needed a place with a garage to store my work equipment, which eliminates all the affordable rentals.

Honestly would have been further ahead making $35/hr with a cheap apartment, lmao.

> Anyone who worked in and cared about customer service would have seen the downfall of it immediately.

Therein lies the problem. In my experience, purveyors of these metrics programs are massively removed from the actual work and have such a weird abstract notion of it that they can't put themselves in both their employee's and customer's shoes to see that everyone hates this but you.

You talk about different tasks having wildly different scope. At the C-Suite level, every task your org performs is a cog or a widget or an itemized process, and the inability to discard that mindset leads to this BS.

It's one of those things where if I was allowed to pass one law that had to be followed for the rest of eternity, it would be that anyone who is going to be making a decision that impacts a job HAS to have worked that job for at least one month solid, at standard wage, in the 6 months prior to the point they're making that decision. Or maybe I'd just force it to where if employees doing the job affected get a 60-70% majority that say it's stupid and shouldn't be implemented its vetoed forever. The first one makes me smile at the thought of a CEO having to cycle through peon level jobs for a full month, but the second one is way simpler.

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>slightly smaller profits.

Aaaaaaaand you lost them. No one will unfortunately ever agree to this because the line always has to keep going up.

We're trying this, but we're switching to 4 days/10 hours, like, I think you missed the point...

I mean... I'd kill for 4x10 considering I already put in like 50-60 hours a week....

Outstanding. That’s the dream!

I know .. but it's always worth reminding people what is meant by wage rises must be matched by productivity gains. It means business will never share their profits with workers.

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The US will never change so long as people get angry at politicians and noy the corpos that pay them.

Or they would do 4x8 and only pay you for 32 hours instead of 40 like this study. Corporate could never fathom paying for 40 hours of labor but only getting 32.

Or just have the office only open 4 days a week and pay accordingly. That way you're not taking on 20% of unnecessary labor expense. Plenty of small businesses are closed one day a week for this reason. Sometimes a certain day isn't worth being open on.

Plenty of companies already do this. I’m mom-thur, 10hrs a day. Love my 3 day weekends.

Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous. cApiTAliSm though right?

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Ya, back when lumber mill wages were $4.25 an hour. Because houses were less than a tenth of a cost they are today. Keep up.

great news, but don't be like this lady bragging to the press about how good your 4-day week is - right or wrong employers hate this shit and will can your ass.

I don’t think I’ve ever sustained more than 30-35 hours a week as a salaried employee anyway. I used to think I was an outlier but now I think this is common and the most effective work week for “knowledge workers”.

The article literally says they didn't take a pay cut, I'm not sure where they are saving on labor expense. I support the freedom to independently judge when it is appropriate to be available for work while being committed to succeeding. 32 hours, 24 hours, 60 hours, whatever.. it's best to do what it takes when duty calls. It's important to find balance between work and family as well as manage mental and physical health. Requiring 40 hours is the problem, maybe a model where nobody is required to work Friday however they are expected to stay on top of their work would meet in the middle effectively.

There is a whole can of worms regarding tax law, full time, part time, benefits eligible, etc that I don't totally understand. The other piece of this puzzle is how can we alter our laws to promote more flexibility for companies, especially as it pertains to full time hourly workers and benefits.

Meanwhile the company I worked at did 16 weeks of this over the summer as an “experiment” that went perfectly with a measurable increase in productivity…then, when it ended in silence, after weeks of complaining about it disappearing with no insight into what it would take to make it permanent, the executives said we would never bring it back because it makes us “lose our edge” because “in China they’re working six days a week so you should consider yourselves lucky.” 🙄

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“You guys have never delivered better results than when you worked from home over the last two years.”
“We are happy to welcome you back into the office - and it is mandatory.”
This is pretty much verbatim what we were told, and the statements really did come in that exact order.

Pass. With 3day weekends you can stack along side your pto. Making it in the middle would make things messy. Holidays that fall on Mondays are gold, taking one day of pto nets you 5 days off.

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Yeah. Those are called 9/80 schedules now.

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If it’s a Wednesday I’d have to put in for TWO days of pto for 5 consecutive days off during a Monday holiday. I’m sorry you have such difficulties working 4 days in a row but most people don’t. And I work night shift so I can run my errands any day of the week I want. Why would you have to wait 3 days? Last I checked Friday is normal business day. So if you have a service conducted on Thursday afternoon why can’t it continue on a Friday? Retail and customer service might give in to 4/10s but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to have multiple shifts. We have day and night shifts here plus 3/10s (which DOES pay all 40hrs) Fri-sun, day and night so the site is never closed.

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I launched a company with 4 day work weeks, it’s been absolutely fantastic.

I don’t have legacy baggage, but 🤷‍♂️

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I’m sorry I like taking vacations?? Sound like you’re soft, honestly.

I’m not saying I want it, I’m saying I HAVE it. And I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say, just because we all have 4/10s doesn’t mean businesses are going to fully close the other 3 days. Like my example, my company is open 24/7 by have DIFFERENT SHIFTS. You really think retail, doctors, fast food, etc are just going to close for 3 whole days?

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Wait you need an education on how cheap houses were back then compared to salaries? Houses were the cost of ONE YEARS SALARY back then. Yes that 4.25 an hour genius.

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great now make remote work the norm

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Now we have 7 day weeks, really. That or short hours split across all times and days of the week, but just few enough hours to avoid paying certain benefits.

That's the tech company low paid contractor(eg. Uber driver) and just-in-time employment of the present.

Some people are still on 5 day weeks... Outside of answer emails on the weekend and the like, but that's not the only experience, and certainly not where jobs have been trending

Andy Jassy would suggest otherwise, and that time spent sit there not doing anything specific is productive time

See: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/andy-jassy-update-on-amazon-return-to-office

That's kinda crazy when I think about how not busy the target is near me.

My question is: who gets the M-Th and Tu-Fri? And those companies (service/sales) open on weekends, is it Sa-Tu, or Su-Wed?

Me? I want M-Th...but you know my fuckstick employer will make me have Tu-Fri because her voluminous crotch will get Fri-Sun off.

No day care in my area supports a parent working a 10 hour day

Nah, in the US they just pay so little you need 3 jobs and work 7 days

Yeah that's what my company did. Hybrid, at least, but ...

This can be a good thing for redundant service jobs but in a reactive coverage position (like IT support and ERS) you can really fuck yourself over with that approach.

Also as someone with kids I don’t want to do 4 10 hour days to be fully burnt on the 5th…

Same. Monday and Friday are still flexible though, you can work from home as long as you don't have anything going on that requires you to be on-site.

The issue is, there are jobs where you need to be there whether there are customers or not and I very much doubt, no scratch that, know for a fact that companies won't hire more people to fit everyone into 4 day work weeks. But I can see how someone pushing papers around can do expected work in 4 days and then be gone for 3 days...

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All of these execs just copy each other.
Zero creative thinking.
In days I’m forced to work from the office I simply leave my laptop in my car overnight.
I’m not spending 10 hours at the office only to pick back up at home.
Sure, I’ll work over the 16 hours I’m awake if I work from home, taking early morning and late night calls.
I’ll get my time back throughout the day in this case though!

I still like the word “flexible.”
If it were truly flexible, it would be up to the manager and their team to determine the need to be on site.
In our case, it is like you explain and the number (although not specific days) of days is mandated.

That 40% "slacking off" is people working to capacity, and then refusing to work beyond it. Rather like mules, who will just stop working rather than let themselves be worked to death. Human brains do not work at full speed for 8+ hours at a time; 4-6 hours of intense concentration is about it, and that's for hyperfocused ADHD nerds like myself. Brains need downtime just like bodies; serious mental work is tiring.

Nah, you should consider yourself "shopping your resume around for a better job with a better company." Fuck that shit.

Yeah, I'm not surprised they want us back in because there's a pretty large campus and right before the pandemic they dumped a lot of $ into renovations. We do all of our meetings in zoom though at our desks because logic

They need to go back to business school and re-learn “sunk cost fallacy” haha