The working day should be 9-3, standard.

[Indecisivelurcher]

The working day should be 9-3. No need for wraparound childcare, which costs £'s and tires children out. More mothers can work. We will have time to look after our elderly, which is so important with aging global populations. With a shorter working day, we have time to pursue our own interests, hobbies and clubs. Time to exercise. Time to cook from scratch. We can keep fit and look after our wellbeing, reducing costs on the NHS. To get a good uptake, clubs should be heavily subsidised, but people will have time to volunteer too, to run the local clubs, to look after green spaces. Because we'll be spending more time outdoors, we'll value our green spaces more and want to look after them. We'll spend time in town centres and hang out in cafe's, instead of just grabbing a takeaway coffee. We will spend our money on local shops instead of online. We will be a community. Time is the key, not money.

I understand what you are saying, we should be working to live not living to work. More flexible working practices are needed and I do believe fewer hours do make people more productive, in some studies.

I do think a four day working week would aid mental health in this country, prople wouldn't burn out as much and have time for hobbies.

Sounds great in theory but just wondering, what would hospital patients would do for the other 18 hours of the day?

I work 8-2 and my husband works 9:30 till 5:30 so he does drop off and I do pickup and we don't need wraparound care. It's not without its problems though, I often struggle to get meetings into my diary because people (those higher up the food chain with diaries that are rammed all day every day) can only do later in the afternoon so I've ended up missing out on being involved in lots of stuff and it's affected my career prospects to a point. Which is a bit shit. It's actually been better since lockdown in some ways as I can just dip in and out as needed and have been able to get involved in a lot more stuff.

Flexible working is great but it does hard to make everyone's working practices fit together.

The thing with these ridiculous scenarios to shorten the working day or week is that they assume everyone has a naice office job which absolutely isn't the case - far from it. The people who really matter, who actually keep the country going, work around the clock stacking shelves, operating on people, clearing sewers, repairing electrical faults and milking cows. I've worked in offices myself but I'm starting to come to the no doubt highly controversial position that too many positions in this sector aren't real jobs. If your work means you can change to 9-3 or drop a day with no ill effects, it probably isn't essential work.

The advantage of that length of working day being the norm could be that one parent could say start at 8 and pick up after school while the other starts at 10 and drops off at school.

In my experience most people start to wind down during the last hour or so of work anyway.

So when all the people working 9-3 need to go shopping, GP, after school activities, restaurants, pubs and anything else, they will have to try and fit it into their working day because everywhere will be closed...
However I do think that there ought to be more legislation to make flexi time possible for working parents.

Unless you work 5 minutes away from Your child's school than 9-3 working hours doesn't make much difference as parents would still need wraparound care - the average commute is probably an hour each way which still means before/after school clubs 🤷‍♀️

Yeah would love to work 9-3 but not in my line of work.

Not to mention the economy... that would be some depression!

The working day should be 9-3

And the emergency services? Sorry, you need help but please leave a message at the tone and we’ll get back to you between 9-3.

What about people who has colleagues and customers in other countries? My boss starts at his 8am, which is my 2pm.

Killjoys 🙄 don’t worry Indecisivelurcher I can see where you’re coming from and I agree with you, sadly where I work it’ll never happen, they’d be open Christmas Day if they could, selling their vast Range 😔

@alltheprettyseahorses so let's chop some of the made up jobs and get those people working in real jobs, worth more people doing those jobs maybe we everyone can do shorter shifts?

@ivfdreaming you are right apparently the average commute is 58.4 minutes! But surely that's another problem that needs addressing. All the made up jobs that alltheprettyseahorses was talking about are probably being done from home at the moment, proving it can be done. More local jobs would do wonders for the local economy. Not to mention the carbon reduction and improvements in air quality. Poor air quality is attributed to 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK.

@amibannedorwhat thank you, you're not banned from my thread 😁

I don’t think 9-3 is the answer, but I agree with the six hour day. Once upon a time the 8 hour day was ridiculed after all ;). With a six hour day a lot of parents could manage drop-offs and pick-ups by setting their hours/shifts accordingly (one starts early and finishes early and vice versa). I agree that the six ho it day would bring greater quality of life.

I'm very happy to update my suggestion to 6hr days, flexible hours 😁

My DM worked 9 to 4 in the 60s this was seen as P/T! By the time she got home ( a good hour or more on tube/train into central London) and picked me up from my friends Mum, it was more like 5.30! By this reckoning of 9 to 3 ,how would anyone get anything done between 10 and 2 exactly?Unless you worked in a School with them! I think WFH seems to be having a moment ,or maybe fewer days with longer hours? Dont think your idea will work really!

Factoring in commute here obviously!

Lovely idea Op but I was a nurse for many years working on in patient mental health wards ,what happens to patients after 3pm and before n 9am?Not to mention weekends .

I can think of few things more hellish than working a 9-3 job and doing the school run every day. I'd be worn ragged. We love our jobs and don't mind long hours. What would be great is more flexible working. Dh and I thankfully can work whenever we want (for the most part) and it's easy to balance life around that. More people should have the option to put hours in where they can and take time out for family during the day if they need it. In my field all of us work in the evenings and move time around in the day for other things. Obviously it's a certain sort of (privileged, usually well paid, professional) job where this is possible, but it should be available to as many people as feasible.

And there should be more options for childcare and flexibility over school holidays. At our school there is no breakfast club, only 1 afterschool club day a week for KS1, and only 1 childminder who covers the whole area (and she already picks up about 10 children, which I imagine must be too many). The option for afterschool club every day would be great.

Your working day could be 9-3. You’ll just need to take a pay cut. That ok?

Basically we live in a 24 hour society so 'working hours' need to be 00.00 - 23.59. What hours of those a person works will depend on the job and people do (generally) have a choice as to what those hours are and how many they do. Some people have no interest in swaning around doing 'leisure' things. Some people are devoted to their jobs and that makes them happy and it is the most important thing in their life. Some people just want to pay the bills. Everyone and their life is different. We don't all want the same things.

So even if you had six hr days how,would that work in hospitals particularly in patient care when often it's a struggle to cover 2or 3 shifts a day🤔

I don't see why everyone's saying it would be less pay, the idea would be to increase productivity and still produce the same amount of work - cut the time wasting, better technology etc.
Morrison's supermarket have just announced a 4 day week for office staff with no pay cuts, they've trialled it and it works. I'd like to see more of that

Honestly I think work from home should be the standard for office work, with office working as an exception.

Or schools should be 9-5 like in some European countries?