Do you think a 4 day week could be possible?

[DreamChaser23]

in the next 10 years as in become more common?

Four day week could save childcare costs, less stress, less absences and more leisure time.

I was talking to some workers in the health sector they also said they would prefer 4 days and working 10 hours each day rather than their current contract.

Yes it's been happening some time already, hasn't it? I know plenty of people (usually parents) who work compressed hours.

I remember reading something the suggested that 4 day weeks tended to be as productive as 5 days weeks for most people. Tbh I don’t see why not. I think that a lot more people will be moving into self employment and will choose to shorten their working week and that a lot of employers will become less concerned about how much time their employees actually spend in work instead shifting their focus to their productivity and general performance.

No. It wouldn’t work for our business. We are open 7 days a week and it would prove more costly to us if we had to employ extra people wanting to do extra hours also.

If your self employed you tend to do more hours. It’s actually really hard to be self employed and keep money coming in. Not every one is able to have these magical jobs where they can work 3 days a week and still be able to pay for house, car, bills, kids etc.

definitely in my Industry - we already now only do half days on fridays

Becoming pretty standard for most people in my place of work, medium sized charity.

Even those without caring responsibilities have seen how good it is for work. Life balance and started to reduce their hours. Often when you factor in commuting and childcare costs, dropping say 5 hours per week doesn't have a massive impact on salary.

We also have a 7 hour standard working day (35 hour week) , which also makes a big difference, even compared with 37/40hours.

But children continue to go to school 5 days a week? (If so, it would cost school more to get 5 days a week teacher coverage?) Or do they do 4 only too?

I think it's definitely becoming more and more common, but it wouldn't work in all professions - in some jobs you do need to be physically present, after all.

And some jobs (I'm thinking retail, but there are of course others) can't offer compressed hours. If your shop is only open eight hours a day, you can't physically work more. And then if your shop is also open seven days a week, all they'll say is "of course you can work four days, but that's all you'll get paid for" and lots of low-paid workers couldn't afford to lose four days pay each month.

I think some schools are already doing 4.5 day weeks.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-48770759

I do compressed hours and its saved a small fortune in childcare.

It's very prevalent in my industry specialism as experts are predominately female. It's the same for nursing where full time would be 3 or 4 days of 12 hours shifts.

I would love to see statistics but imagine female dominated industries have to adapt to their workforce so already do this and is another reason more women in government is a necessity.

I already work with people who do that. In reality they don't do more work because they work longer days and they don't have to deal with customer phone calls and complaining early in the morning and after 5. The rest of us have to do their jobs on the day they are off each week.

no

@Chilver I think it's France where children to 4 days up till 5pm but don't go on wednesday, again them you lose the need for after school care.

In China children stay in school to 6pm but they don't have homework.

I used to be a nurse and a four day week is quite common ,but it's still same hour's. Just compressed into four days rather than five some trusts encourage it as they have to roster fewer staff on certain days etc

I do compressed hours so 8:30 til 6, four days a week. Works beautifully. No impact on productivity and 3 others in my team do it too.

I have worked 30 hours over 4 days for years. The strain of working a full time job in those hours has been huge. I have just gone back up to 37.5 hours over 5 days and the relief is enormous.

Anything is possible if there's the will.

Maybe primary schools could be open 4 days a week, and then on day 5 there would be something like specialist sports tuition, music, art etc. Potentially specialist teachers could take pupils from several schools at once, maybe from different year groups (for art and music at least), or something like that.

So regular teachers would teach 4 days per week, and then the specialists would do 4 days, but across different schools (so the day off would be different for each school).

In secondary school there's probably more scope for doing longer days, so they could go to 4 days per week, with 3 days off.

Something along those lines, anyway! So kids would still get 5 days at "school", without teachers having to work 5 days a week.

Incidentally, I think the study that tried out 4 days weeks found that people were no more productive when they did 8hrs per day for 5 days, than 8hrs per day for 4 days. So it wasn't that they worked the same amount of hours but in fewer days, it was that they worked fewer hours over all, but had the same level of productivity.

Extra employees mean extra training costs to my industry is struggling with the amount of part timers flexo timers maternity cover and everyone needing regular updated training.

Two links to ponder. As I say, anything is possible (that is possible). It's a question of actually wanting to do it. Something I personally judge everyone by - especially politicians ...

beta.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-four-day-week-could-work

I work a four day week, more or less do the same amount of work I did in five days. I only get paid 80% of my salary though!

No.

I listened to an interesting interview with a CEO, running a sales type business, who has done this. Salaries and sales targets stayed the same but they don't work Fridays and apparently it's working out well. Nobody did much on Fridays anyway. Apparently, research shows that the average office worker only does 3.25 hours actual work per day. If you give them 4 days to do their 16 hours or so, they'll still get it done.