More Councils to trial 4 day week for 5 days pay

[mrsm43s]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/green-party-four-day-working-week-lambeth-council-lewisham-hackney-b1299448.html

So what do you think about this? Apparently in South Cambs, the trial was successful leading to cost savings snd improved staff satisfaction, and is now a permanent arrangement.

Personally, I'm all for it, but must admit it's because I work for a local authority, and the more councils that adopt this, then the more likely I am to benefit from it in the future. That said, as a Council tax payer, I can understand people being upset at ever rising CT bills when staff are being handed a free day off a week.

I’m deeply skeptical about this. I worked in a (private sector) business which introduced a 4 day week and it definitely did not improve productivity, though it was popular.

I reduced working hours for staff and increased pay slightly, and improved productivity and wellbeing, but it wasn't the snappy headline alone that did it.

I had to really work on reconfiguring the hybrid balance, and on creating constructive work meetings. It took a lot of work to get the agile flow going, you can't just drop a day and expect productivity to go up.

As someonevwho worked my entire career in the Public Sector it's embarrassing that we can do what took us 5 days to do in 4 days. Why is this congratulated as some kind of efficiency and not what the hell was being done on the other day we were paid for. Does nobody think there's a fundamental issue that cutting someone's paid time to work by 20 percent produces the same results as before. You think this would be acceptable anywhere but tge Public funded functions.

Do you still work and if so what bit of public sector?

Yep. Would be better to make 20% redundant and make the existing staff work harder. Thats what happened in my company 🤷‍♀️. My team of 5 was cut to 3.8. Workload is the same if not more. The organisation saves money. We have our noses to the grindstone 5 days a week and then some. No 4 day weeks for us! 🤣

not sure what to think of this. On one hand, I'm like you OP - as I'm also in the public sector anything that increases the chances of me getting the same one day I feel like I should be supporting!

On the other hand having worked in councils I tend to agree with some of the posters on here - 20% reduction in working time is a huge amount to somehow fit the same amount of work into, if staff were able to do that it suggests they were hardly working flat out to start with.

If it was a move to a 9 day fortnight it would be more feasible - things like considering if everything needs to be a meeting, using AI to summarise things, generally reducing of unnecessary faffing, reducing monthly 1-1s to 6 weeks, etc., sickness levels reducing if people know they never have to struggle on for longer than a few days until the next weekend, plus just generally getting your head down and working smarter as you have an incentive to do so.

Pre Covid I used to have to travel loads for my role, now 99% of external meetings are done over teams so in some cases that's taken what could be 2 full business days when you include travelling etc to 2 hours, so there are definitely some cuts that can be easily made. I'm just not convinced it's a whole 52 days' worth per year!

I haven't got a clue! I'm not an expert, just have read up a bit on it as it may eventually get round to benefitting me. Maybe have a look on the South Cambs website at their policies as a guideline.

The big study in this was done in U.K. private companies. Productivity and revenue went up staff sickness and staff turnover went down. Most of the companies involved in the trial kept it on after the trial ended.

The reason most people disagree with it is more of a knee jerk not getting their money’s worth rather than an evidence base. We’d rather have lower productivity and keep the 5 day week or do compressed hours(which has shown not to have the same benefits) than look at what actually works.

Have they actually asked the people receiving their Services or 'burning out' to pay their council tax and other taxes that fund this.
Having a 20 percent pay increase makes people happier and more likely to stay in their job. Who would have known.
If they do same work then exactly how would that reduce burnout or increase employee wellbeing. A day off doing the same work for same pay would, wouldn't it. Load of BS. It's only working because the base level of expectation started so level. Got an absence issue. Manage it. Don't just give everyone an extra day off.

I deal with various depts in councils in my (private sector) job, barely any respond in any decent timeframe.

Even things with defined timescales for responses come and go with nothing.

Any dept that gives us a response in a reasonable timeframe becomes noteworthy!

So no, I don’t believe a 4 day week should be encouraged unless it can be demonstrated that response times or service has improved

I worked in the public sector for a while. I reckon about 90% were hard working and carried the 10% that were actually bloody useless but it was too hard to sack them.

The South Cambs pilot showed improvements across a whole range of service metrics, presumably some of which will include response times.

I think in lots of ways it is good- particularly if we want to get parents into work. Both work full time in 4 days and only need 2 days childcare. Surely that would be a massive bonus in family life- and good for the tax payer ...

I live in Lambeth. I am both skeptical and jealous.

Private companies have much more developed performance indicators and strategic goals for their business, including financial performance, than the public sector that they can compare in these situations. They also employ sanctions for under performance that just don't apply in the PS. They also don't have a reactive service delivery. They have buisness priorities. So the comparison is disingenuous.
It's not knee jerk. It's because as service users we know
All your focus is on employees. Why are they there?

Brilliant idea. How is this applied to people who were on 0.8fte or 0.6fte before the change? I hope they are getting a proportionate reduction in their working hours? Are over-worked and under-staffed departments given carte-blanche to allow their backlogs to increase with noone under pressure to "work overtime" (ie do the 5th day of work)?

I've worked in private and public sectors.
There were plenty of under performers tootling along in the private sector
And I saw plenty of dire mismanagement in the private sector too

Measured how and by whom? The end users? Or the council itself? I live in the area and have had an open ticket for an excessive household bin to be removed for 4 weeks now. Just saying.

I’ve checked their website and they say services either improved or stayed the same but no further actual info on stats or depts.

So it could be the service remained the same for 99% of their services (and therefore means they were very inefficient previously) and 1% has improved.

It would be good to see some actual numbers.

As a local gov employee I’d love this. I’d love to work 4 days a week but I know I’d get a full amount of work and it wouldn’t be pro rata for my hours so not worth it. However I can’t get all my work done now in my 5 days a week and often work overtime and at weekends so no idea how this would work in reality. Plus it would need to be people working different days to ensure continuity or service so harder to do things like team meetings and so on.

The nhs offer compressed hours for some roles and it works really well and gives people a bit of flexibility.

141 complaints to the Ombudsman last year about this Council. That's where people have exhausted all the complaints process and have to go higher. It will be a drop in the Ocean of those not getting the Service they require and even smaller drop of all those eventually getting some Service after pushing and waiting. Who just expect a crap Service.

Compressed hours are different. This is just same pay for a day less work.

I’d be all for that!!

Not quite the same but I moved from working for a council with a 35hr working week to one with 37hrs and genuinely felt my productivity drop- like I was just stretching out the day- and needed more breaks to get through it. I do think shorter or more focused is better. Even more so for frontline roles where you need to be alert and focused.