Scotland Joins the Growing Global Movement Towards a Four-Day Workweek

You were closed on Sunday and Monday before the change, now you just add Friday as a closed day too.

This is already a dilemma businesses face with reception desks. If you have only one receptionist, what happens when they take lunch or a bathroom break, and what happens if they call in sick for the day?

There are a number of options for front desks (whether it be an office, hotel, museum, shop or otherwise):

1. Single worker on a 10-4 Mon-Fri schedule (reduced hours across all days) and the front desk is unstaffed at lunch and during bathroom breaks. Customers have to attend during reduced hours.

2. Two or more workers with overlapping hours most of the week, but occasionally they are by themselves. There is always at least one worker at the front desk (whilst others are taking lunch or not working that day).

3. On one day of the week, another person sits at the front desk (and performs another role the other 3 days of the week they're working).

4. The business no longer has a staffed front desk. If someone is visiting you in an office, you collect them from the lobby/waiting area.

Small businesses typically have exceptions carved out (i.e. rules don't apply to companies under 50 employees).

Once the companies get larger, you just strategically set-up the work schedules such that people only show up four days a week but all shifts are covered.

Well then it'll just become the "growing global movement" for three day workweeks after that, or 6-hour work days, etc. of course. There's no way if they just get this one thing then they'll be happy and done. See: gun control advocates

It's a two way street, companies have the right to have fixed schedules from their workers to ensure planning and everything else goes smoothly.

It is easier and sustainable to work around four-day work schedules than to give workers the flexibility of changing their hours.

Also of note, laws and regulations around the world differ in what full time means because full time is where the benefits kick in by laws; in other words; if the worker change to part-time, then the entire benefits package can be drastically impacted.

For an example, in many companies in US, if you work less than 40 hours, then companies are not obligated to give you any benefits such as paid time off, health insurance, etc, they can mark you as a contractor and not an employee.

Changing the 40 hours down to 30 hours as full time would not allow the companies to do that. So, I rather have four-day weekend with full benefits first and then part-time would be considered anything less than 30 hours.

Your idea means that it is more likely that the employees get less benefits while still requiring 40 hours work-load as baseline.

Options are problematic because you end up with a competitive/tragedy-of-the-commons situation, where no-one really ends up having the option at all if they want an appealing job or competitive salary.

Using national-level regulation to define a "new normal" isn't what I would choose by preference, but I just don't see anything else working without side-effects undoing all of the potential advantages to employees.

the point of the 4 day week is that the 5 day week is too long to be efficient/time productive

I disagree. The consistent shorter week totally helps to even out the cadence of the week. Also most businesses can’t survive if they have to give everyone an additional month and a half of PTO.

That highly depends. My company was acquired by a German parent and we now get unlimited PTO, yet I have not taken a vacation at all since last summer. When or whether you're able to, even if it's your legal right, is largely dictated by team rhythm and scheduling. I'll freely admit nobody is forcing me to never take a break, but it's hard when I know we'd fall behind (not exactly helped by the pandemic right now making it impractical to travel anywhere). If everyone was working a 4-day week, then me also working a 4-day week would be no problem.

To be fair not all types of articles have an obligation to present all opinions on the matter. If they are reporting news then in most cases they are reporting what happened and not analyzing the benefits and downsides of what happened.

Journalism is a punch-line now.

In my mind it used to be a respectable profession, but now it's just partisans against partisans. Even for issues that aren't on their face overly political.

>Journalism at it's finest, just pure, biased, opinion pieces.

You apparently misunderstood what you were reading. The author is not a journalist and the article does not purport to be journalism. The author is an executive recruiter who writes a personal opinion blog hosted by Forbes.

> How would you do coding with insane deadlines, insufficient people, terrible management, and constant changes (with no change in dates) in only 4 days?

- Don't have insane deadlines

- have enough people

- have better management

- forbid changes after the project plan has been approved.

I have worked in one company that worked like that, or perhaps it was just one factory in that company. It works at least some of the time, or at least it did at that time (late 70s to early 80s) and place Mullard, Southampton.

From the article it isn't clear if this is a legal mandate, but perhaps it is not referring to ultra-high-paying jobs that require insane crunch schedules?

In the article, it mentions that Microsoft saw a 40% increase in productivity by allowing looser schedules, so perhaps programmers solve problems faster when they aren't staying awake 48 hours a stretch drinking Jolt* and eating pizza three meals a day?

* dated myself

You use labor law to disincentivize such behavior by a business. If the business can’t successfully manage and profit with 4 work days per week, creative destruction.

The problem you're describing is that the business is probably not viable. In some countries what you're describing would be illegal. In others there are sometimes exemptions for tech workers (we should work to cancel those!). It is also doubtful whether such an employer is actually getting any additional productivity out of this practice.

On a personal level, the solution is to not work at this place. If that's an option. Some sort of organizing (like the U word) could help create leverage against abusive employers.

Consider that the 5 day work week is a relatively recent thing. Not too long ago everyone worked 7 days a week. The world didn't stop spinning when most people shifted to actually working 5 days a week with normal hours.

In Canada there is an endless supply of tech jobs that are 5 days a week and 8 hours per day. I am a hiring manager in a company where we care about our employees and pay them well and I can't find enough people. Partly because people prefer to work at places with a terrible work environment for various reasons (looks better on the resume, bragging rights, our work maybe isn't as exciting ...).

In short, more suitable staffing and scoping. Hopefully I don't need to explain the arbitrary nature of the 40-hour week.

A lot of people like the idea of flexibility along with these reduced hours, but I'd actually prefer if we went to a uniform 3-day weekend with Friday off. This would have the benefit of aligning the definition of the weekend in the middle East with that in Europe and the US.

Years ago I was doing consulting work for a startup, and was able to negotiate a 4 day week. I worked 2 days at a time with Wednesday off.

My next job was as an FTE at another very early stage startup, where we were constantly working and in the office 6 days a week, with some all-nighters before demos etc.

I was vastly more productive during the 4 day week period.

Do you run your own business? That's the only way I can understand someone choosing to work 6-7 days/week for months. I'm an employee at a FANG and have been there long enough where I effectively just work 4 day weeks for most of the year by taking Monday's off, and I am literally just as productive as I was when I worked 5 days.

Some laws in NL allow averaging out over a longer period. Its not a real example but say for example you work 3 days on average over a period of 6 months by doing 6 for the first 3 months. Its surprisingly comforting to look forwards to.