Topic: A Hundred UK Companies To Adopt Four-Day Working Week With No Pay Cut - page 2. (Read 192 times)

On the other hand, in our country, some workers must work 6 days a week with required 2 hours of paid overtime a day. This may sound absurd, but it happens especially for those who are working with minimum wage. Some companies offer compressed working hours; most of them are in the BPO field. I work 8-hour shift a day for five days, and I really find it exhausting that I sometimes file for a leave mid-week just to have a little break, 2 days of weekend break is not enough  .  4 days work even if they have to add 2 more hours a day to cover the 40 hours work a week will be efficient for both employee and employers. Less tardiness for employees, cost-efficient for employers since they only have 4 days of work in a week.

i have seen many businesses that pay 40 hours of labour. but where workers had to be in the office 15mins before shift and stay 15 mins after shift to do things like morning briefings and tidy up work area so that it does not disrupt the actual "business opening times" meaning workers lost out on half an hour of unpaid life. also their lunchbreaks of 30min-1 hour were unpaid.

this meant they were at their workplace for 9 or 9.5 hours of the day but only paid 8 hours a day

so shifting to a 10 hours day fully paid is not much of a lifestyle change for those workers on their workdays to be at workplace for 10 hours and paid for 10 hours. and getting a weekday off in exchange.
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as for costing this change of routine:

you will find that in a course of a year, the amount of time someone goes sick. or takes a day off because they have a maintenance guy /delivery coming around to their house during the week. or having a doctors appointment or taking kids to the dentist.. soon adds up

this includes the extra payment to employ a "temp" when too many are off at the same time

by not having to rely on "temps" and having less days off for random reasons.. it balances out

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if you can squeeze on an hour of productive work per day in the 4 day allotment. allowing staff to set a monday or a friday as their "business-week-day" day off. so that they can do things like go/take kids to doctors dentists opticians (those services never do weekend appointments)

you can save alot of days where staff just are not at work on days they should be.. which then saves on having to keep a 'temp' on the payroll handy to cover the missing staff. which saves more lost profit for company now, by not having to pay extra workers as a buffer

it also makes it handy if a worker has a 'emercency' tuesday off or a mid week sickday. the employer can then tell them to come into work on the friday-monday(whichever the extra 'weekend day' is) to make up for it
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other employer incentives are that staff work the 5 days(or 4) but can also trade days with other workers(doing same duties)_. where if you want another day off. you trade your 1day salary(pre-tax) to another worker that wants the overtime.which again avoids the employer having to pay a premium to get a temp to fill the spot.

thus you have your 32hour week. another worker has their 48hour week. and it has not lost or caused the company any loss or cost them more.. compared to having to employ extra 'temps' to have a buffer

I wouldn't say not a bad decision. At least these companies have made thorough calculations to stable performance and results if it is assumed that they will only cut less productive working hours or actually these companies are gradually reducing dependence on human workers.
The article doesn't talk about working hours anyway.

If they work four 10-hour days instead of the five eight-hour days today and the Employee will be paid the same amount they are currently earning and there will be no reduction in salary I don't think there is a problem. more time at home and less time at work, the most important thing is that the ultimate goal of the company where we work can be achieved at the end of the year.

The biggest cash flow at the beginning of the month is mostly from the salaries of workers, both government employees, private and other institutions because all of them prepare their primary, secondary and other needs at the beginning of their salary.

It is not applicable to health care companies since they need to be up 24/7 and they are serving people. But let's say other companies—well, it is a good idea on this, but I am sure that a lot of owners and bosses wouldn't agree to this since it would be a loss for them. However, this would have a significant positive impact on employees because they would have more rest and productivity that they could bring to the company. Well, this is still in the trial period, but still, I am hoping to see this soon and also experience this one since the two-day rest day is very short for me.

its probably to cut energy cost also.
most companies wants their employees to work like slaves to the extend of not paying their over time. an employee to these companies need to work long hours a day to achieve the same productivity the company expect. this is a time for observing the employees who isn't working well if they have yet not lay off.

"They argue that a four-day week would drive companies to improve their productivity, meaning they would achieve the same output in fewer hours."

It is, as OP said, also said that there won't be any pay cut. I would say it really depends on the industry whether it is possible or not. There are sometimes just some logistical hurdles to cut a week down from five or even more days to less days, respectively. The articles I just went through mostly refer to the well-being aspect and the chance to attract new talent.

I have seen articles in the past for such initiatives for other countries as well, and I recall that it was often said that the work would still have to be done for the week. So to say, the deal being that if the work is done on Thursday, people can take Friday off. This would go into the direction what you mentioned, work 10h/day if you please and then take three days off. Whenever possible, I would advocate such a model as well.

I have been in a job where I was completely free to choose to work between 6 hours and 12 hours a day. That was back at the time when I was in my early 20s. A certain goal was set for the week and we were free to choose (unless there was an urgent deadline) how to go about the workload for the week. 6 days were possible, starting as early as 5 AM and finishing as late as 9 PM. Of course one could argue that the productivity decreases when working days get longer and longer, but first, you can really get used to it as you know that we are just talking about a three day work week potentially and you have plenty of time to recover, if necessary. And second, it really depended back then on the work that needed to be done. We had a mix of less intellectually exhaustive work (engineering experiments where stuff just had to be prepared according to plan), and more exhaustive stuff (actually coming up with the plans). I can tell you that most of the people arrived at 5 AM in the morning and left at 5 PM in the afternoon and still had a happy face. It was such an amazing and diverse group that I was working with back in the days. Very well educated mothers who could organize a nanny for their children much easier (because just three days a week), lots of students who were literally able to take a 70% job besides their studies (that was how I got started, but I went full time), but also lots of engineers in their 70s who weren't able anymore to go a full and stressful distance.

From what I can tell, our productivity level back at the time was always on point. I did that job for almost 10 years and then I went abroad. I have ever since been a strong proponent for way more flexible working hour models. Application numbers for that company always were through the roof back then and the diverse set of people on my team also showed that there are crazy different circumstances people are coping with, and they have all been willing to work hard, but had to sort out all kinds of problems in order to make their weekly schedule fit their life circumstances. Children, taking care of parents ( for example on dialysis days, their own health issues, studies, shared custody, desire for individual freedom, time consuming/extravagant hobbies, etc. the list goes on).

Most people really aren't lazy. Many bosses who complain are also often not very good at defining goals and the respective guidelines. Defining goals and guidelines can actually be a hard thing, it is not always trivial. All too often the blame for lack of success is shifted onto the workforce. The company I worked for back at the time had frequent meetings involving their employees with the objective to improve the definition of goals. After some time everyone developed a feeling for the time and effort that is probably required to get to a certain desired point/output. Of course it didn't always work out perfectly and we needed more time and those who were able pulled off way more hours a week then, but even then our boss paid the extra hours in many of the cases unless we really fucked up.

If the system and the whole environment is set up the right way, and a way that allows for the system itself to evolve over time, flexibility can be an enormous contributing factor to productivity.

At this point, this experiment has probably not yet arrived at a definite finding. This experiment has been done across the globe: UK, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Iceland, and some others. If I'm not mistaken, results vary. But the overall goal here is not centered on the workers' well-being alone. It doesn't stop there. After all, the workers' well-being will definitely affect their performance at work.

If workers are overworked, suffering from fatigue and burnout, unhappy with their jobs, it would result into poor production, poor quality, errors and mistakes, wastage, and so on. Resignations, absences, and leaves will be common. But if you've got a strong and happy working force, it will definitely result into a better and faster production. So this is thought to be a win-win situation.

I didn't read the article, but I'm assuming all of it is here, and I'm wondering if workers' hours per week are going to be reduced or if they're going to be kept the same but with longer shifts per day. 

Either way, I've worked 40 hour weeks spread out between both 4 and 5 days, and I much preferred only having to work 4 days even if I had to work 10 hours/day.  It's definitely nice to have three days off a week.  I assume the UK workers are going to be putting in fewer hours, else there wouldn't be a news story about it, and if that is indeed the case more power to them.  Most people in this world are worker bees (myself included), and a lot of us hate our jobs, our bosses, coworkers, and/or the company we work for.  With technology being as advanced as it is, a lot of work could be done by robots--and should be if it isn't already.

It then comes down to a question of whether to keep paying existing employees their regular salary, and I suspect a lot of companies might have a problem with that.

A four day work weeks makes a lot of sense to the workers but it would affect many companies negatively. At least workers would have time to take care of their non-formal lives which is important to their family lives, health and wellbeing. But this policy would affect the production output of most firms and will adversely affect their profitability. A reduction in work hours should be balanced with pay cut except the promoters of this policy have the intention of supporting the affected firms financially. Also this policy shouldn't be forced on the firms in the UK but should be optional except the government want to pay for the companies' losses.     

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Nearly everything relating to the UK in news cycles has been doom and gloom for the last few years now. It was surprising to see optimistic UK headlines: 4 day work week with "no loss of pay" rollout. Of course this is available on a limited trial basis for only 2,600 employees.

Given recent trends where many believe billions in student debt should be forgiven by governments with no fallout or damage to the economy and financial insitutions. Does it make sense to rollout a 4 day work week without cuts in pay? Or without businesses sustaining significant losses. Where does the money come from. Is it a good business model for the future.

The american equivalent to this would probably be efforts to raise minimum wage or to unionize large corporations like amazon or apple. Its difficult to tell which direction public opinion is leaning. Or whether people are taking steps to learn more about business and finance to help them support what is best for them.