Can someone explain to me why this needed a large trial. Nothing is stopping any company doing it tomorrow.
If some companies find that their workers can do the work they normally do in 5 days in 4 then any new position will be for a 4-day week but on lower pay. legacy staff will get their legacy pay till they quit or leave.
Good for the mostly middle-class workers who will enjoy it.
Get ready for 80% pay and 4 day weeks but 100% of the original workload. That’s the **end** game.
Because that’s what all these companies pushing this really want. To reduce the salary bills.
Good thing life in the UK is really cheap /s
We will need some of the largest and most well-known companies in the UK to adopt it before it becomes fully mainstream though. This trial is encouraging but we have seen how reluctant companies have been to allow even hybrid working once lockdown ended, let alone a four day week. It will be a long time before this is mainstream because too many managers have a puritanical work ethic.
Good work and good progress for all involved, hopefully this movement continues.
It would not work in many jobs the building industry, manufacturing, to name two. working 4 days could only work in IT, or office jobs
Unless it’s purely for political reasons, I absolutely cannot understand why the Government isn’t looking at more remote work employment, cutting down travel expenses + get that “greener UK” tag line. Essentially being able to boost employment numbers in a cost of living crisis.
It feels like most of us are screaming for paid work, cannot afford to run a car, broken transport systems, wasted day time travelling, you name it. In 2022, why isn’t there a single innovator for the Government, publicly considering any of this?
Instead we keep hearing these moan and groaners, I have to say particularly on GB News, the likes of Lord Sugar and Joseph Valente, openly mocking anyone with that very idea for their personal business as “paying up for a bunch of lazy bastards that don’t want to work and enjoy the money”
It’s quite simple guys – to quote Russell Howard; “If you’re meant to be remote working but you choose instead to spend that time enjoying porn, your employer fires you. It’s that plain and simple.” It isn’t rocket science right? It feels like I’m stating the obvious.
I’ll keep banging this drum – Sugar praised businesses *for* adapting during the pandemic *and* used the phrase “this is going to be the future for many businesses” then less than a year or so later, we’re all a bunch of lazy bastards. Might be just me, but it feels almost like a sense of burning anger from these kinds of powerful people.
For me it’s bittersweet really. Dissapointed because I used to think Sugar was a clever guy, but feeling that I know more in myself about how I feel the way the world’s eventually going to go, weather I’m right or wrong I guess.
It’d be miracle if some politicians managed to work as much as four days a week on average.
It’s been 20 years since I worked in a manufacturing environment but I’m pretty sure the advances made in that time won’t mean that machinery can run 25% faster just because the crew operating it are reducing their hours by 20%.
It’s all very well a bunch of consultants cutting out unnecessary meetings and reserving time to really concentrate on your work (two of the examples of productivity enhancing measures cited as brought in during the study) but in a myriad of business circumstances you simply cannot increase output because the productivity of the business is constrained absolutely by time rather than by “effective thinking time” for want of a better phrase.
If my health and safety rules say I need to have a lifeguard on duty when my leisure centre pool is open I either need to close it 20% of the time and reduce my revenue or increase staff numbers to cover extra shifts and increase prices to pay the increased staff costs. What I can’t do is get a productivity improvement that allows the pool to stay open with the same staff costs if I pay my lifeguards 100% of the salary for 80% of the hours.
Were any of these companies paying hourly rates?
This works easily for salaried employees but there’s a few different ways to apply it to hourly rated staffing, with various different affects.
The question is which companies adopted the 4 day week and are they hiring?
My company is run by old fashioned people. I like it here, it’s a good company to work for, but behind the times when it comes to “being modern”. They still don’t like the idea of people working from home.
Remember when the BBC slagged off Jeremy Corbyn for suggesting this?!
14 comments
Can someone explain to me why this needed a large trial. Nothing is stopping any company doing it tomorrow.
If some companies find that their workers can do the work they normally do in 5 days in 4 then any new position will be for a 4-day week but on lower pay. legacy staff will get their legacy pay till they quit or leave.
Good for the mostly middle-class workers who will enjoy it.
Get ready for 80% pay and 4 day weeks but 100% of the original workload. That’s the **end** game.
Because that’s what all these companies pushing this really want. To reduce the salary bills.
Good thing life in the UK is really cheap /s
We will need some of the largest and most well-known companies in the UK to adopt it before it becomes fully mainstream though. This trial is encouraging but we have seen how reluctant companies have been to allow even hybrid working once lockdown ended, let alone a four day week. It will be a long time before this is mainstream because too many managers have a puritanical work ethic.
Good work and good progress for all involved, hopefully this movement continues.
It would not work in many jobs the building industry, manufacturing, to name two. working 4 days could only work in IT, or office jobs
Unless it’s purely for political reasons, I absolutely cannot understand why the Government isn’t looking at more remote work employment, cutting down travel expenses + get that “greener UK” tag line. Essentially being able to boost employment numbers in a cost of living crisis.
It feels like most of us are screaming for paid work, cannot afford to run a car, broken transport systems, wasted day time travelling, you name it. In 2022, why isn’t there a single innovator for the Government, publicly considering any of this?
Instead we keep hearing these moan and groaners, I have to say particularly on GB News, the likes of Lord Sugar and Joseph Valente, openly mocking anyone with that very idea for their personal business as “paying up for a bunch of lazy bastards that don’t want to work and enjoy the money”
It’s quite simple guys – to quote Russell Howard; “If you’re meant to be remote working but you choose instead to spend that time enjoying porn, your employer fires you. It’s that plain and simple.” It isn’t rocket science right? It feels like I’m stating the obvious.
I’ll keep banging this drum – Sugar praised businesses *for* adapting during the pandemic *and* used the phrase “this is going to be the future for many businesses” then less than a year or so later, we’re all a bunch of lazy bastards. Might be just me, but it feels almost like a sense of burning anger from these kinds of powerful people.
For me it’s bittersweet really. Dissapointed because I used to think Sugar was a clever guy, but feeling that I know more in myself about how I feel the way the world’s eventually going to go, weather I’m right or wrong I guess.
It’d be miracle if some politicians managed to work as much as four days a week on average.
It’s been 20 years since I worked in a manufacturing environment but I’m pretty sure the advances made in that time won’t mean that machinery can run 25% faster just because the crew operating it are reducing their hours by 20%.
It’s all very well a bunch of consultants cutting out unnecessary meetings and reserving time to really concentrate on your work (two of the examples of productivity enhancing measures cited as brought in during the study) but in a myriad of business circumstances you simply cannot increase output because the productivity of the business is constrained absolutely by time rather than by “effective thinking time” for want of a better phrase.
If my health and safety rules say I need to have a lifeguard on duty when my leisure centre pool is open I either need to close it 20% of the time and reduce my revenue or increase staff numbers to cover extra shifts and increase prices to pay the increased staff costs. What I can’t do is get a productivity improvement that allows the pool to stay open with the same staff costs if I pay my lifeguards 100% of the salary for 80% of the hours.
Were any of these companies paying hourly rates?
This works easily for salaried employees but there’s a few different ways to apply it to hourly rated staffing, with various different affects.
The question is which companies adopted the 4 day week and are they hiring?
My company is run by old fashioned people. I like it here, it’s a good company to work for, but behind the times when it comes to “being modern”. They still don’t like the idea of people working from home.
Remember when the BBC slagged off Jeremy Corbyn for suggesting this?!