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philmcp

Over 200 companies have now made the switch to a 32hr work week: https://4dayweek.io/companies

The benefits for the employee are pretty obvious, but there are also many benefits for the company:

- Staff are more productive (for previous pilots: output almost always hits 100%)

- Job listings get (way) more applications

- Staff are happier

- Staff are healthier i.e. off sick less

- It's better for the environment

- Staff turnover reduces

- It attracts experienced candidates

- Costs reduce

- It's better for gender equality

Most of these companies on the site offer 100% salary, some offer 80% (but I hope to remove these in the future)

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This is one of those situations where it's a clear documented (via study and real world experiment) benefit to both workers and employers, so you wonder why it's taking so long to spread.

One problem is I genuinely believe it has to be mandated. Every company has people who will take any action purely to make themselves look attractive for the next promotion cycle. And if even just one person is actually putting in 50/wk at a company that's supposed to be 32/wk, everyone else is going to feel pressured to work 50.

I think to some degree the people making these decisions to some extent are more likely to be those who enjoy the external approval aspects of work - the "clueless middle management" in the Gervais Principle framework, who enjoy doing more work and want to see those below them do the same.

> This is one of those situations where it's a clear documented (via study and real world experiment) benefit to both workers and employers, so you wonder why it's taking so long to spread.

Since open floorplans became universal a while ago, and are only getting partially replaced by work from home because the rent is cheaper, what I wonder is if that is the rule, instead of the exception.

The farther people are from the front lines, the more they seem to prefer the stick to the carrot. Government officials, upper management, etc. are typically far more worried about enforcement than encouragement.

Shorter workweeks are an encouragement tool. Longer ones are an enforcement tool.

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