Three or four day working week, who’s ready for it?

[Gandalfatemyhamster]

I think we need some adjustment to prevent either full scale rebellion or the MH crisis getting worse and worse.
I can’t see how a three day week would work unless we all spent much more in shops/ restaurants/ cafes, thus propping up the industries currently taking a hit due to COL.
Everyone around me is at breaking point.

Is everyone at breaking point? No one in my circle is, and we have a mix of public and private sector. People who want to have dropped to 3 or 4 days a week anyway, and some have chosen to stay full time. You are free to put in a flexible working request to drop hours if you want to work less.

@Overthebowbut most people can’t afford to. As I said, I work in MH and there is a lot of burn out.

I worked 5 days a week for almost 50 years and don't know anyone who had "burn out".

The point of a four-day week isn't that you have a pay cut or work longer hours on the days you work, it's that people who work shorter hours are more productive and get the same amount done in four days as a they would do in five. Work expands to fill the time available to do it. If we all worked six days a week, the country wouldn't become 20% more productive.

If you're working in mental health, you are obviously going to come across more people with issues than the rest of us will
I don't see what link you are making between the working week and visiting cafes.

I've never experienced or witnessed burnout that couldn't be solved by a few days off (ie the weekend)

That’s fantastic for you.
But you must see how things have changed over time for people?

I love the idea of a 4 day standard working week

Have often thought that more people working sensible hours would be better than smaller no of people working longer hours

I worked for my company for decades and worked a 4-day pattern, same number of hours as those on a 5-day week but just longer days.
Some employers have always provided these options, can't see why they should allow reduced hours for the same pay though as that does not make economic sense.

So people expect same pay for less work time? Or longer hours over the 4 days? I am not sure of the costs of employing someone but would it benefit the business to employ more people to cover?

And i presume people still want the 7 day customer ability in things was retail yet people will work less?

Sure sounds good in theory can't see how it would work overall

I work 40ish hours over 4 days, Monday & Tuesday 12hr days, Wed 9hr, Thursday 8hrs. But, I work for myself. My mental health is great, I can work more or less hours as it suits me (yesterday I had a half day as the weather was great!)

I obviously have the downside of the stress and responsibility of running a business, and the obligation to my employees. I'm flexible with them, no one works more hours than they want to, I do a fair rota that means people have 2 or 3 days off together. Can this be scaled up to big businesses? Presumably it's not a case of the whole country getting Friday off? Some staff could find they're in, out, in, out on a hokey cokey rota meaning no quality time off?

FWIW no one I know is at breaking point. Is it the crisis you think?

It would if you worked in a factory. So 6 days would be more productive, 4 days would be 80% productivity.
Small employers eg estate agents, and large retailers, would still need to employ staff to cover the full hours they’re open, so no benefits for them
Funny how it seems to be office staff working for local and central government who believe they can easily fit 5 days work into 4!

i do compressed hours over 4 days and it works well for me

I do 3 x 12 hour shifts a week. Have a lovely lot of free time 😊

I work a 4 day week on 100% pay and it’s absolutely turned my mental health around. I’d never be able to go back to 5 days.

I’m ready for it please. I’m late 50s and struggling with full time work now. But I can’t afford to go part time at the moment. I’m willing to believe that are a lot of people who feel like this.

It's obvious that this will only work in certain sectors and likely not suitable for anywhere where certain cover levels are required so shops, restaurants, nurseries, medical staff, emergency services, factory jobs, transport etc.

But I can see how it would work for office jobs where a lot of the productivity savings required to fit 5 days work into 4 can be made by dropping tasks that aren't strictly essential, reducing the time allowed for meetings, looking a what can be done more efficiently etc.

A lot of the time if you allow an hour for a meeting it will take an hour, if you allow 45 minutes, the same updates, decisions etc will take 45 minutes, with effective chairing.

Or drop some of the meetings. A lot of office workers talk about their jobs being 'back to back calls' where they only have to listen in and contribute to part of the meeting.

To me that seems incredibly inefficient and you can't do anything particularly useful that requires focus and concentration at the same so its not likely a good use of time.

Also if your workplace has the 'copy every email to all and sundry' culture which means you spend ages wading through emails. Half the time no-one is reading most of those emails and I think it's probably not the most efficient way of communicating.

My workplace is very bad at this but I'm thinking that there's likely a better way where you set up Teams channels or similar for a particular project, client or workstream and all discussions, documents etc live there.