As for the goal to maintain 100% productivity whilst cutting back on hours, I'm confident that they will succeed. In fact, they'll succeed in this without requiring some kind of brilliant plan, as this recalibration happens automatically.
When you start working one day less, nobody will reduce your workload by 20%. You'll have the exact same workload as before and now need to achieve it in less time.
There's many ways to cross this gap. An obvious one is that a typical 5 day work week has moments of slack, depending on the culture. Friday after lunch is where productivity sinks in many offices. Wednesdays are also slower as it's typically the first moment in the week where things are running (planned, prepared, on track). In a 4 day work week you sacrifice this breathing room, the 4 days become more compressed.
Another natural change is to take a more aggressive stand in rejecting non-sense. Excess meetings, unimportant emails, etc. This works very well and is extremely effective for the simple reason that you MUST. As such this time compression is a blessing, a cleansing mechanism for yourself and the organization.
You'll be amazed at how much time you can win back. Let's say you do need to attend a meeting. It's a 1 hour meeting. You're needed in the meeting. Go in and say you only have 20 mins. As if by sheer magic, what needed to be discussed gets done in 20 mins. Without this forced "budgeting", people would just fill the hour with bullshit.
Counter intuitive, but by being rigid instead of elastic, you maximize value.
I'd say it's incredibly common for a modern office worker to be engaged in email, meetings and chat for some 4-6 hours per day.
Not only does this leave little time to do actual tasks, that little time is also highly fragmented across the day.
It's a point I've made repeatedly on similar threads: the problem with modern office work is too much collaboration. Pretty much we spent the vast majority of the day figuring out what to do when, instead of actually doing it.
Absolutely. The complete lack of slack in the modern office drives a lot of my stress. I am transmuting that into an long-term win, however: it is driving me to seek flexible working arrangements, working for myself, setting up passive income streams (however small they are) and generally working less. I refuse to give my best years of my life to my work, and will work 2x as hard (for myself, obviously) to partially decouple time from income.
> This same productivity can be achieved in wayy less time than the standard 40 hours/week.
The nebulousness with which productivity is defined based on the context suggests it is not nearly as objective as some would have you think.
I'm in a Staff role with my fingers in multiple projects across several teams, and I still only have 2-3 hours of meetings a day.
Only?? It's surprising you tolerate even that much.
I worked as a contractor for a while with a 32 hour/week schedule. I was essentially just as productive as I was full time.
Reality is for most creative jobs, there's a fraction of your work week where you're extremely productive. Everything else is just rounding out the admin work while your brain is mush.
Like, if a marathon only takes 6 hours then why can't you do a second one on Sunday? And if I harass you enough can you do another one on Saturday afternoon as well?
Every time I've tried this or seen it tried the meeting gets rescheduled and everyone's time is wasted. I wish it worked this way.
It's not impossible, it just requires a culture of consideration, communication, and prioritization.
Gonna say that, excluding standup, this has to be at least 50%.
And the older I get, the more I realize that thinking that such a thing exists is its own kind of immaturity.
Until you fix the institution you can't change the hours.
Where I work, we work output-based. We work in sprints where the amount of work that can be done in a sprint is fixed, expressed as velocity. This capacity is a hard constraint and immutable (unless you hire additional people).
The business is free to spent that velocity as they please, but they have no say over velocity itself. They also have no say over input (hours) or estimates (they're not qualified to do so).
These hard constraints are a thing of beauty, it forces serious prioritization. Call me old and cynical, but in my 25 years in IT, I'd say at least 80% of what gets build is bullshit. Untested brain farts from higher-ups that have no tangible benefit to any customer or user. Hence I fail to be impressed by almost any "priority" or "deadline", exceptions aside.
If they're doing this to compete for talent, go ahead by all means. I suspect they need to do something like this also because they're a UK SaaS company (so lower wages to start) serving the low-end of the non-profit market (price sensitive buyers). And they don't have the enterprise features to compete with Salesforce and CRM for the high-end segment.
I'm still searching for the golden goose "conversation" that's actually faster on Slack. Sure, a quick back and forth or check in is actually faster.
I have yet to find a meaningful discussion that's actually faster on Slack. It seems like they always drag out as sparsely filled, 45 minute threads. Nearly everyone of these would have been better served by a 10 minute call.
This, so much. Let's just jump on a quick Teams meeting almost always can be taken care of in an email. And then it's documented and can be referenced and sent to all parties who may need to know that were not included in the "quick" Teams meeting.
The upside/downside to this is that you can't filibuster on something that matters to you but nobody else cares about, because they already left the room before you started. But of course neither can any of the other people who think their hill is as valuable as yours.
So why pay cut
Magic? No, modern office work is incredibly ineffective. Most of the day is spent collaborating with almost no part of the day spent on actually doing things.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/04/thousands-o...
From the article:
Employees from a wide range of businesses and charities are expected to take part in the scheme, which will run initially from June to December, including the Royal Society of Biology, the London-based brewing company Pressure Drop, a Manchester-based medical devices firm, and a fish and chip shop in Norfolk.
It comes as the push for companies to adopt a shorter working week – crucially with no loss of pay while aiming for higher productivity – gains momentum as a way of improving working conditions.
I am surprised the lack of mention of Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands. Most business persons I contact, normally only work 4 days a week.
That said, some of the last few weeks at the time of writing have in practise turned out to be four day weeks due to public holidays. Could this be what causes the confusion?
This, however, is not the same as an entire company working 4 day weeks.
Externally it might seem like 4 days a week, but its actually 5 with one where you can't reach them.
I want to know if 1-2 years down the line, the productivity is still running at 125%
But it is only one factor. Good management, strong teams, and a whole lot of "soft" stuff is even more important than beanbag chairs and foozball tables. The "good management" part is where most companies go pear-shaped. I wouldn't want to go to Buckingham Palace every day, if I hated the people I worked with/for, and felt like my work was being treated badly[0].
Although I work exclusively at home, and have no desire to ever dress "business casual" again, I think that a good* office environment can be extremely conducive to great work.
* As in "not like 99% of today's offices."
The cube farm was hated at the time, but things only ever get worse if you work in an office.
I don't. Can you explain what it is about every single job there requires 8 hours of 100% availability?
That's the problem, there. One-size-fits-all approach.
Every job is different. A lot of it is up to the management. If they get it right, things are shiny. If they get it wrong, they're sitting on their beanbag chair, alone, waiting for the movers to take the furniture away.
But every company (and internal culture) is different. Some, I intensely dislike, but have to admit, they get results. Others, I like the culture, but I don't feel they get much done.
Also, every employee is different. I know people that dress up in bespoke suits for work, in a cube farm, every day, and absolutely love it.
I know people that hate remote work, and can't wait to get back into the office.
Different(folks).different(strokes)
Good managers, especially first-line managers, are worth their weight in gold, and are usually disregarded by upper managers.
A good manager can make an open-plan or cube farm job an absolute joy, and a bad manager can make a corner office career a nightmare.
I like to think I was a good manager. I kept really good employees for decades, in a pretty banal environment, and for a fairly low salary. They could have gone anywhere, and they knew it, but they stuck around, anyway.
I have managed to do this at a succession of several jobs now. When I briefly tried to go back to 5 days, it was really hard. It seems insane to me now that anyone works 5 days a week. (And I do know plenty of people work even more, and I am very lucky).
Fridays are for doctor's appointments and car repair and grocery shopping and errands. Which probably does mean I'm away from "work hours" for these things less than I would be full-time, I just schedule such things for Fridays where possible. In general, I am pretty convinced that I'm at least 90% as productive on 80% time as I would be on 100%, maybe more.
Working at non-profit academic, I'm definitely not making my "market" salary. I could be making a lot more than I am now, even at 80% of a salary, at various more typical organizations. But I'm not sure how viable the 4-day week is with potential employers -- even if I'm willing to take a paycut to 80% of salary, which I am! Unlike the OP which is giving everyone a 4-day week at full salary? My impression is that most high-paying software engineering jobs/organizations are not going to let you do 4-days a week? Which is crazy when they could get me for 80% of the cost with most of the productivity -- but I guess the high-paying organizations aren't exactly trying to save money on salary.
I really don't think I'd go back to 40-hour-a-week-standard unless I had to.
When i say "I'm at least 90% as productive" -- I mean I am more productive per hour worked. Not that I end up working 90% hours but only getting paid for 80%.
I really do work 80% hours, only four days a week, Monday to Thursday. I am not expected to and don't work on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays.
I just get done I think 90% or more of what I would get done in five days, in four days. As seems to be commonly reported by people in this situation.
Some people have also said "Yeah, but in my remote software dev job, I work even less than 80% of my expected hours, I just don't tell them, and I get paid a full salary."
I'm not gonna say much about the ethics of that, I guess I think it depends on the specific situation. But regardless, I'd myself just be stressed out if I had to be less than honest about my work. And my 80% schedule is clear -- I really don't work on Friday, nobody expects to be able to reach me on Friday (any better than they could on a Sunday or at 4am, unless I'm on-call), I don't check my email or look at my work calendar, I am really not working. And that's the whole benefit to me -- it's a different thing than using lots of hours for personal social media or something (which, sure, I do to some extent too whether 4 or 5 days a week.
the funny thing is that the same people who talk about collaboration at the office are often the decision makers that set up open offices where everybody wears headphones and nobody ever talks to each other.
I think most workgroups have effectively been paying extremely high overhead in social costs just so the organization could have the option to organize easily. The problem then is that meetings are called flippantly. If it's hard to get everyone in a room, you'll do a better job capitalizing on when it happens.
The downside is there really are a large array of tasks that a group can tackle better than an individual, but I've never seen a corporate group meaningfully recognize or organize for those tasks. Far more often, I get pulled into meetings because some specific individual or another is lacking in autonomy and expertise.
Maybe they think about how to justify their working arrangements to us humans.
Tuesdays are the new Fridays, y'all.
More people, more hours: more coal extracted.
Interestingly, farmers in the middle ages are a much more balanced model (catastrophes aside): the land they had was mostly manageable by a small group of people, and there's only only so much you can optimize, given the patch of land that you have. So you do what you have to do and when you're done, well, you're done.
Personally I believe in remote and that it will get even better as tech to facilitate it improves.
I don't believe in working 4 days for engineering specifically. The field changes rapidly, there is a large learning curve and it takes a lot of hours to really master it. There is also some fixed overhead in communicating with other departments which stays the same even if you work less hours. So you remove more than 20% of your productive hours with this approach. You also reduce the time you spend learning. This further hampers your productivity. I think it will be a niche thing only done by some startups that care about this, have no other way to attract talent and aren't very ambitious.
That being said, for some people it will work well. It's pretty common for some roles in the netherlands for instance.
I've worked remote and managed remote teams for many years.
Working remote definitely doesn't not make "most people" more productive. Some people are more productive remote, but the average person gets less done even if they work more hours when remote. It takes a lot of training, mentoring, and performance management to get them back to in-office baseline.
This is regarded as a feature, not a bug.
What do these maxims of economics mean for a 4 day work week?
At Beacon, nothing*. But implement this at Tyson Foods, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Waste Management, the FX trading desk at JP Morgan Chase, etc. and you get 2-6% productivity declines & some amount of increased supply-driven inflation unless you offset with new technology (eg. software, robotics) or techniques.
Celebrate work from home, 4 day weeks, flex-time, etc.... but understand that as these benefits carry costs in important (not all) industries. Also, the migration to jobs having these benefits, from those important jobs that do not, drives inflation and/or illegal immigration and so-called "white collar" top-heavy joblessness risk during recession.
No free lunch, even on Fridays.
** Note: UK small business situation is concerning, even if it doesn't apply to Beacon: "Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, showing that 2 million (or about 40%) of the UK's small businesses had less than three months of cash in reserves to support operations. He noted that 10% (or 200,000) were in grave danger, and 300,000 only had a few weeks of cash left."
It’s obvious that the relationship is not as simple as one input, one output.
If you work your employees 8/5, and I do the same, but with a gym break with a company-provided trainer, my employees will work fewer hours than yours, but I’d bet my productivity will win in the long run.
This 4 hour work week experiment is along these lines. It’s not obvious to most of us how it will end or what impact it will have on productivity.
Yes. It's easy to say "if we assume everything is linear...". Justifying that assumption and demonstrating that it's valid is another, significantly more difficult, thing entirely.
People worked 40 hours a decade or two ago as well, and since then there's been enormous technical improvements. Why not use that improvement to work less and enjoy life, instead of chasing higher throughput in various industries?
This is the assertion this whole argument hangs on. I'd challenge it. At a farm or assembly line probably, I highly doubt it in knowledge work.
That seems pretty good for a 20% decline in working hours! Unless I'm missing something?
So what if productivity decreases by a few % if it means we all get better work life balance.
Change is not easy but over time equilibrium can be found which is not dependent on this paradigm of infinite growth.
Economists stopped repeating the ceteris paribus fallacy about half a century ago. At about the same time as systems modelling got mainstream.
I vote for retiring the no free lunch one next.
Rote assembly line tasks in a warehouse or factory setting, even there you will see a ramp up mistakes and accidents as the hours get beyond a certain point. The chances of these ever have been "work from home"are slim to begin.
That is shocking to me. It feels like I just push these buttons and the package shows up to my door like magic. I assumed everyone has a job pushing buttons so why would we waste time pushing buttons for more than 4 days a week.
If the organization is focused on time spend no work (either in office or remotely) how can work be done in 80% of the time?
Really don't understand how it works in day-to-day. It resembles the unlimited vacation days policy which was later found out to be unhelpful to employees.
Arguably it matters in how you KPIs are set. I think it's reasonable to expect a full time employee to work more than one day a week. If you can meet all your KPIs with everyone working one day a week, then maybe you're aiming too low. Of course, if you require everyone to work 60 hour weeks to hit KPIs, that's an even bigger problem.
Banish from your mind the idea that "hours spent at work" translates directly into productivity. My butt in my seat doesn't produce anything. My brain is what produces code, designs, problem-solving, ideas, etc, and it, like any other part of my body, needs periodic rest in order to function properly.
Most businesses can move to a 4-day work week. If you’re an employer and you read this, just give it a try for a month and measure output.
Your limiting beliefs will most likely become weak opinions.
Seems like a case of one step forward, two steps back
Being in the office for the first time in my career showed me that there are definitely upsides, especially when you get along with your team really well.
Though 100% mandatory office time is BS.
I think the fact it's your first time has a big impact. Give it time. Any time I start a new job I enjoy being in the office for the first 6-12 months. Once it becomes routine (same commute, same lunch, same people) and you have learnt how to do your job (and rely on others less) it becomes much less attractive. I'm not saying you'd go full remote but I would bet you will go hybrid and transition further remote over time. This is what I've seen happen with all of my colleagues (including people I thought would jump straight back to the office post-pandemic).
In the US, COVID cases are five times higher than this time last year, and the CDC estimates that 1 in 5 will result in long COVID.
But not 5 days a week, no.
I'd rather walk to the lake and go for a swim during the afternoon, than walk to a train to walk to an office.
Take that time back, go use it to go on a walk or exercise. You'll thank yourself. Prior to the pandemic I worked remote but in a location less obsessed with productivity. I had flexibility to exercise in the middle of the day most days when my energy levels topped out and I was in the best shape of my life. Fast forward to now and infinite demand always likes to pretend everyone is somehow behind and I too let my reclaimed commute time slide. I've recaptured it, started exercising regularly again, and already feel great. This culture that obsesses with productivity generation for someone else above all else isn't healthy.
I mean you do you, but Bleck. "You don't have to come to work on Friday but we still want you to spend 12 hours a week crammed onto a bus or train." How else could you possibly write code or sit in front of a computer all day?
A quick google search suggests that the average US commute is 28 minutes one way, or about an hour a day, not 3 hours a day. The average US commuter is probably in their own car though, mass transit is usually going to add some, despite other social and personal benefits. I also know it's going to be higher in certain major metro areas. And that the US built environment is kind of insane, and sometimes seems like it was honestly designed to maximize commutes.
I agree nobody should ever be spending 3 hours a day commuting. But it's not like the only possibilities are working from home or 3 hours commuting...
As some employees may lose like an hour a day just to travel whereas that hour could be spent working on features etc. if they didn't have to travel into the office.
Your commute is 3 hours per day?!
That's nearly 17 hours over a 5 day week assuming no problems.
It's absurd to compare a once-in-a-lifetime event to everyday work meetings.
Anticipating huge real CPI cost increases, weighed against net productivity of people working from home, is the bet that you can net the same amount of value and productivity from existing employees in a 20% shorter period, and compensate for inflation by giving them time "off" instead of spending cash on a raise?
Not cynical, just a very wise hedge. I will probably ask this on other 4-day threads, as it seems like a very economical way to retain staff at the same net productivity without paying out cost of living increases. If the economy ever finds a new equillibrium and your company is still profitable, it becomes a tempting private equity target, as they could buy it and simply remove the 4-day week compensation and reap easy growth benefits.
You can't directly compare salaries with the US though : the tax and benefits structure is vastly different.
Better in my experience : https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/
By the way, it is common to be paid far less for 40 hours than you should receive as well, and plenty of people work unpaid overtime who would be happy just to work the 40 hours they get paid for.
Salary negotiations are always tricky, especially if you don't know your true market value. Given the difference between compensation at different companies one way you could attack this problem is to find a company that will match your current salary but at a reduced number of hours. Employees have the same problem that companies have: it is hard to charge by value if you don't know your value.
As a gardener my work is worth less than as a computer programmer than as a financial advisor. Because each of those domains values time entirely differently, and because there are different levels of competition.
If you can show your boss that if you work less that your productivity will likely remain the same or that it will go up they will probably wonder why they've been paying you for all that extra time in the past... so instead I would just argue to try moving to a different company at a better salary for the same amount of work or for the same salary with less work.
Screw productivity.
We, as a society, produce vastly more than enough stuff of all kinds for everyone to live comfortably. Insisting that everyone must continue working a 40-hour week every week forever just because that's the best that could be negotiated the first time workers successfully fought for their rights after the Industrial Revolution is foolishness.
Total productivity has skyrocketed since computers came on the scene and helped to streamline millions of different processes. And where have those gains gone? Eaten up by the very wealthy.
A 4-day work week is one very small step toward letting us, the regular workers who actually produce all the stuff, genuinely share in the spoils that streamlining created.
I have at least one hour meeting every day that could be 30 minutes (or non-existent).
Even without crunching extra hours per day, you can be essentially as productive with fewer working days per week if you are more focussed on the days do you do work.
I think there are some roles that end up suffering. Like someone who is a product designer and now has to cram more creativity in fewer hours. Someone who is in inside or outside sales and has less time where they overlap with customers to perform demos and close deals. It may work - it may not work.
The penalty for being sick for a day (or your kid being sick for a day) is more drastic too. Although perhaps those folks just use their extra day to catch up.
I’m more bullish on remote work than these 4 day a week experiments.
I think a better question is how much of this slack time is necessary to reach the current productivity levels, and how much is just...slack?
[1] There are a lot of anecdote stories where people have a kid which limits their available time, and suddenly they are more productive than they have ever been during that small time window and get their startup off the ground etc...
But this is a pilot in a country where over 40% of kids go home and get to school by themselves starting at age 5 [1]. Not to mention we are talking about a continent where many children are independent in terms of mobility to school [2]. Denmark, Spain, Poland, Italy, Czechia, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Great Britain, Norway, and the list goes on.
The obstinacy, arrogance, and stupidity of managers from these guys to Musk and Sandberg is incredibly disappointing.
Changing to 4-day work week at this time just shows how out of touch some people are. It's only a matter of time before reality catches up to them.
I see these stories all the time. I’m pro the idea. But it’s not going to work if one industry works Tue-Fri and another Mon-Thu and their customers are taking off Wednesday. That standard work week being _standard_ is a feature.
Of course, 4.0 days would be even better!
Completely agree, if you need to micro-manage then workday oriented results are easier.
Likely this doesn't work well on a team, or for more open-ended work. Never seen any organisation aside from private contractors who actually do this though.
Advocating for working 32 hours a week as if 40 is hard? I don't really get that at all. I know lots of people in other areas who easily work 60+ hours a week for years on end.
I suppose if all you want to do is coast along at a company that will likely get wiped out by the competition when TSHTF, it would be nice to work 32 hours, but if you want to get ahead, don't set your sights so low.
Sure, some benefits sound decent but also deceiving… pension match is nice but 6 weeks of holiday (+BH) is actually 24 days and getting £60 for each holiday day taken is £1440 a year that won’t rise with pay rises.
I’ve always found Monday is a slow day for me to reload everything back into my working memory and get back into flow.
I wonder if this is why Monday meetings are good. So that everyone can be reinvigorated for the week ahead.
so while I would not mind having 20% income cut considering I work most projects for company which embrace more likely 996 scheme this would either mean I would have on Monday twice as much work as usual or i would lose these projects
this can't work unless you are isolated company (hard to imagine the field) or there is nationwide law making this standard
You are doing the same amount of work in less time, not less work. Company goals do not change, nor do their deliverables or expectations of you.
A reduction would only make sense for hourly employees (though I think the hourly rate should go up so the total weekly pay is the same) but if you are being paid full time, it should not matter how much time it takes you to complete your work.
You are paid for your knowledge, skill, and ability to deliver. You are not paid to be working a set amount of hours or days.
When someone burns you, don't go back to him / her for the second go around! Even if that person is a good friend. That's what I've learned. Alternative version of this is don't start a company with someone who is a newly minted millionaire & is single, not sure of what to do next in life, and not all that interested in money.
1. They are facing a huge negative demographic dividend.
2. They are facing steep inflation, low energy and food security and lower economic growth.
3. High social security costs may not be sustainable in the long term.
4. Finance is crumbling and real economy is taking over. Monetary expansion had its run and is no longer the panacea.
How will they handle this and still emerge unscathed while competing with China and India and Indonesia and the likes.
This isn't even accurate. What is EU competing with China and India on? It should the reverse if anything, how will India and China compete in High Tech and Precision Manufacturing with the West when they are suffering massive brain drain?
But it is something only information workers can do because productivity doesn’t translate linearly to hours put in.
But anything physical, manufacturing, etc, it is simply more time = more output.
Unless we use more and more automation and better tools of course. Which is also happening.
My grand-parents bought a house to my parents when they were 27. My parents had it easy and never learned personal finance. They refused to lend me 30k to start a mortgage for the house in Budapest, Hungary despite having 2 young kids because they didn't trust Hungary stability and wanted me to go back to Italy.
They have been keeping 60k in their checking account for the past 10 years. I've tried to convince them to invest a part of it in ETF but my father wrote me that: "They have invested in the Italian social security system and they have no need for other investments other than their government pensions and the house they own". Real estate value in Rome has declined 30% since 2012.
I have been telling them about the population decline and how the pension system is gonna go belly up in the future. Then Elon Musk also tweeted about Italy grim population collapse future last month. I told my father in great distress that I was sadly right. He told me I'm working too much and I need to relax and essentially he won't be taking advice from me because I'm not thinking straight, implying I need medical attention.
Try to save Italy and you will be called crazy.
Soon you'll only stand out by announcing the 3 day work week.
...and get killed by a team that just outworks you. How many pro-sports teams have switched to less and less training :)
I do hope all our competitors switch to 0 day workweeks...
Pro sports is flipped, and often each week the athletes are learning new tactics/counter-tactics based on their opponent, or adjusting their existing patterns to perfection, or grinding out exercise routines to be able to demand more from their body. Drills are required to "train" their body into being able to do these routines reliably on-demand, and new exercise routines are often the best at forcing your body to adapt and grow.
That said, even pro-athletes have rest periods once the season is over. Also, many of them incorporate rest into training routines as well. An NFL player usually will rest after game day for 1 or 2 days.
I live close to Shoreditch but preparation time and travel both ways is easily 2 hours a day (for some of my colleagues that would be 3+ hours a day).
If you went from working from home 100% 5 days a week to working from the office 100% 4 days a week results in the exact same amount of time, except you remove all the monetary savings from working from home (~100GBP in travel alone).
No thank you.
They claim 80% of time but it's not true at all as I explained before. Not only that but the cost for the individuals is huge when going back to the office.
You must not live in London to comment that.
They tell people they will spend 20% less time to work-related activities which as I said is a lie.
Not only will they spend just as much time for work, it will be more unpleasant and more costly than working from home.
