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.

What a joke. Why should people in the private sector have to work 5 days a week so that public sectors only have to work for four? If the level of service is not affected, there were clearly people with not enough work to do which should have resulted in savings by laying some people off.

I'm envious but if it doesn't harm their output I see no problem.

It's a 2 tier authority. The teachers are employed by MATs or Cambridgeshire County Council, and Social workers by Cambridgeshire County Council, NOT South Cambridgeshire District Council, which is an entirely separate entity.

Cambridgeshire County Council still operates a 5 day working week.
South Cambridgeshire District Council has adopted a 4 day week.

More private companies have currently adopted a 4 day week that Local Authorities (currently only one in the whole country).

@OonaStubbs completely agree. If you can fit your work into 4 days then you have a days more work in you! Happy for these pen pushers to be on a 4 day week for less pay but I’d be furious if my council did it.

Back in the real working world you cannot have a 4 day week without an increase in costs. If there is not someone on my farm doing the work on day 5 (which has to be done on day 5) I have to pay someone else to do it. In which case the cost of your food shop goes up. Or we import egg from countries that don’t have the costs we do and give everyone buying cheap takeaway food Salmonella.

Condensing rubbish. I was working with English Local Authorities six months ago on measuring health inequalities. I am well aware of the frameworks currently being employed. We are actually discussing Cambridgeshire because they have metrics for the 4 day week. Lambeth don't, do they. They are just thinking about it and the local government Minister has said don't as did the Conservative Minister before. Why would this be then.
You are talking about long term strategic aims of Lambeth in improvements in key aspects to meet a target for 2030. This is different to changes in day to day service delivery by reducing working days for those delivering the service. Which is what is being discussed here. Tge actual discussion was on the 24 metrics for Cambridgeshire which are all outputs, if you read them.
Lambeth receives over 300 complaints to the Ombudsman a year. 4th highest in the Country. They can't provide the services properly on 5 days. How is 4 days going to improve that. The number of legal actions on their housing department is shameful but they say their outcomes are on target and getting better. Better from the floor, maybe.
Lambeth is meeting 72 perc of it's metrics at the moment. Exactly how is going to 4 day weeks going to improve that. Why can't they operate to budget in their new great outcome framework which I know nothing about. How is reducing staff time by 20 percent going to help actually operate within their budget. Oh, it's the public sector and it doesn't matter we can just say we had funding cut so everything will be excused and blame aportioned to anyone but ourselves.
Lambeth is implementing a recruitment freeze next year but you are advocating for employees to cut their working time by 20 percent. How does that work, then. More work to be done with existing employees but one less day to do it. No services will suffer, the great outcome framework will be met. Yea, sure.

And again, the private sector are completely different in this regard. Saying it is done in the private sector is just not relevant to the public sector. Business objectives are just not the same as fulfilling demand lead statutory functions and delivering public funded services.

And I'm a current performance professional in a London Local Authority (compared to you, retired from a 'public sector role' in Ireland).
You talk rot in a pompous, grandiose style, but you clearly don't actually understand any of the current Performance Frameworks and keeep throwing around unsubstantiated snippits of your opinion, which appears to be old style Presenteeism over Output/Outcomes, with no thought or understanding for the wider strategic picture. More hours of busy work does not necessarily correlate to better outcomes for residents. We need to focus more on better designed, smarter solutions, not just grinding out more of the same equating 'more' to 'better'.

Whilst on a personal level, I obviously hope this initiative will reach me in my authority, (who wouldn't want to work less l for the same pay), I do have doubts about the readiness of authorities to implement this now, particularly a blanket approach across all services. But I don't think presenteeism and bums on seats is the long term solution. Strategic service design, including likely a 4 day week with staff output valued over staff presence is definitely the way we should be looking.

The poster is not talking rot - Lambeth is my council and they are dreadful. You are just pushing this in the hope you can slack off on the taxpayers dime.

Actually, me. I wouldn’t want to work less for the same pay. This country is virtually in a crisis. Services are horrendous. Litter everywhere, petty crime ignored, failing healthcare, schools are awful. armed forces completely underfunded. We need to be working out how to solve these things. Not having middle managers fluffing about working out how they can pretend to be more productive in less hours to benefit only themselves.

It feels like a form of stealing from the taxpayer.

I also feel we demonize work in modern society. Work is good. It gives framework, structure and a sense of achievement. Something an awful lot of NEET’s are desperately in need of. To be fair, what we need are good decent jobs that people can be proud of that help society.

I suppose if they cant recruits or retain staff its a round about way of a payrise and can help work life balance.

But I think the optics are terrible. People wont like it. There are so many jobs office jobs where presenteeism is more important than output. Even some non office jobs people can work quicker than they do but dont have the stamina for 5 days so slow down to make it 5 days wor as pay and hours are so linked.

We as a nation went from a 5 and a half and 6 day week to a 5 day week in the 1930s instigated in uk by Boots chemist factor owner in Nottingham for his factory workers

where a 4 day week has been implemented some 50%+ less sick days have been noted just in the same way Saint Monday decreased in the 1930s

It feels like a form of stealing from the taxpayer.

they are tax payers

also to be fair I’m in an industry where a 6 day week is normal and many people work 80 hours a week during summer.

But, my point still stands that we implement all these fancy rules and wonderful regulations that make our employees lives so much better. Then we import items from abroad where they don’t have these rules and we lose those jobs.

Anyone know if Boots still have a factory in the Uk?

The thing is council workers arent generally producing goods. Its not normally possible to buy them cheaper in a place with less workers rights.

A lot of these services are the opposite of profit making businesss because the people who need them couldnt afford them anyway. They are supplied as a public benefit. Tax payers want value for money and i agree the perception of this will be very poor.

But what value does a social worker have. Is it number of families supporting, what if that familiy is more complex. If they are stretched does it serve society better to have 4 day weeks so 2 social workers remain, or have one leave due to stress and the other one more stretched and doing a crapper job. Its never going to make money.

Why not simply maintain the status quo of the five-day week, and cut headcount by 20%.

I largely agree with you- but - having managed a PS team .... When we couldn't recruit because our salaries weren't competitive I instead had to rely on locums which cost the authority (and therefore the taxpayer) a lot more.... So if cutting hours is their only way to recruit /retain staff because they can't see a way to increase salaries then this will probably save the tax payer a fortune in locum costs

Plus actually not all services are a cost to the tax payer. Some generate income. And councils often have investment properties that help fund their services too

Because the point of the policy is to motivate staff and promote their wellbeing. That would do the exact opposite.

But paying everyone 100% of salary for 80%:of full time working hours is the same as giving everyone a 25% pay rise in terms of wages per hour worked, and the law on treating part-time staff fairly requires that benefits given to full time staff must also be given pro-rata to part time staff which would mean that you'd have to give an actual 25%:pay rise to any hourly-paid staff

I disagree.

The majority work a five-day week, and a reduction in headcount would motivate others to deliver.

This trial is all part of the further enshitification of public services in the UK.

Indeed. I don't think LAs have many hourly paid staff.

Personally I would rather the pay rise than the hours cut. But I can see why an LA might go down this route to improve retention and cut dependence on locums.

I have former colleagues putting two children through private school they earn so much as locums for LAs.

You can disagree as much as you like. Increasing someone’s workload while seeing their colleagues made redundant is the very opposite of motivational.

And I will disagree.

There is a valid reason that tier one investment banks and trading houses use annual decimation, it’s to drive productivity and performance.

Hence the UK sits 4th in the G7 for productivity.

Those institutions are driven by avarice. Public service workers by definition aren’t.

Avarice, please.

Without them, inflation would multiples of what it is now. Would you like that for hard-pressed families?