Hacker News Reader

Comment by barryvan | Hacker News Reader

Although I'm in Australia, I work for a UK-based edtech company (Wonde) that operates a four-day workweek -- having joined just over three months ago. I know that I can only contribute anecdata, but from my perspective I've not seen any reduction in output.

Indeed, I've seen fewer meetings, and meetings defaulting to thirty minutes, rather than sixty. I've also seen more async communication -- not once have I received the dreaded lonely "Hello" in Slack. It's of course not all sunshine and lollipops. People aren't always available, so you have to work around or wait. On a personal level, I find I approach each day with more energy and enthusiasm, and I love that I get to spend more time with my family and can (shock!) go out to lunch with my wife during the week while the kids are at school. There seems to be a direct correlation between my improved personal life and an improved professional life.

View on HN

> People aren't always available, so you have to work around or wait.

I would have thought if everyone moved to four-day workweeks, they would all take the same day off, essentially extending the weekend.

If you work on the factory floor and produce all your widgets in 4 days instead of 5 then it doesn't matter what day you take off - it probably makes sense for everyone to take off the same day.

If you're talking to customers 5 (or 7) days a week (restaurants, sales, helplines, healthcare), then the company needs to provide continuous cover.

Not where I am! Rather, it's a negotiation with your manager to see what works best. That way, we can ensure we have coverage across the week. We're all "on" for Mondays and Tuesdays, and then people take Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday off according to preference and suitability.

Yes, more people take Friday than Thursday, but quite a lot of people enjoy the zen-like lack of distraction when they work Fridays. Or so I've been told!

The pro tip is to work Monday, and thereby catch nearly all the stat days.

Some enlightened countries pro-rata stat days, but New Zealand doesn’t.

> stat day

If you don't know what a "stat day" is (I didn't), it apparently stands for "statutory holidays" which is like public holidays.

During my brief time in the US, I observed that over there the public holidays tend to be something like "nth Friday/Monday of so-and-so month"; that way you get a long weekend. This is how it's done in some other countries as well.

Unfortunately not in my country (where I'm lucky to have both Saturdays and Sundays off! (I should probably move...) ); if a public holiday falls on a Wednesday, you get the Wednesday off. But on the bright side, there's plenty of holidays here.

The employer can fix up the imbalance -- if there are N bank holidays in the year, give all 80% part time workers 0.8N extra days of holiday allowance above their usual amount (etc), and mandate that they cover the bank holidays with days from their allowance if they would normally work them. (My UK employer does this.)

Or just don't have them off by default and add the days to all employees allowance, but always allow people to book them off if they want.

That way if you have a family and are all off you can spend it together, but if you have nothing to do can use it when it better suits you.

It’s time and a half and a day in lieu for working a stat where I am. If you work it much outside 8.30-5 penal rates rise, but that part is employer specific rather than legislated.

It mentions a fish and chip shop and an education facility.

I’d guess that the bulk of fish and chips are sold outside 9-5 Monday to Friday, and that there would be rioting in the streets if school days were reduced 20%.

> there would be rioting in the streets if school days were reduced 20%

Why not move schools to a four-day week, too? If it works for adults at work, I'm sure children would see similar benefits. We already know that typical school hours deprive children of much needed rest.

Why not move schools to a four-day week, too?

Because the unspoken advantage of a four-day week is you get an entire day to yourself without your kids.

I absolutely hate it when parents respond to questions like this, but…

Do you have kids? I love mine completely and unconditionally, but a day off being an employee and a parent (well half the day at least) sounds like bliss!

It's also just easier to do some of the boring chores work without kids in the house.

Because unless the kids were all off on the same day each week, which wouldn't work for their parents who have to fit in with their employers needs, then everyone would need even more babsitting cover than they already do.

If the kids were not all off on the same day, then teachers would struggle to get consistent teaching because 20% of the pupils would always be missing from a lesson.

I'm not sure kids can handle 10 hours school days. Or any increase of what they have today. Not sure, just my guess.

> I love that I [..] can (shock!) go out to lunch with my wife during the week while the kids are at school

(Genuine question) but why wouldn't someone be able to have lunch with their OH while working a traditional 5-day week? Surely a lunch break is something everyone is entitled to even when they're working that day?

Not the OP, but I suspect it's more a question of time. My my wife and I work on opposite ends of town, so if we where to both hop on a bus, meet in the middle, enjoy a nice and leisurely lunch at a nice restaurant (as opposed to just grabbing some fast food) and then hop on a bus back to our respective offices, we're probably looking at at least 2 hours door to door.

Hell, even if I'm just going for lunch by myself there are lots of restaurants I cannot really go to, simply because it takes too long to get there, eat, and get back. Basically, while I always have time to eat lunch, but very rarely have time to enjoy lunch.

> it's more a question of time

So, given we're talking about employers offering flexibility, how about allowing people to take a longer lunch break so they can go for lunch with their OH, but either start their day earlier or stay at work later?

Many professional / salaried roles would be fine with that.

I get in early, only take 10 minutes at lunch but then I head home at 3-4PM to miss rush. Sometimes I log back in from home and do more hours (especially if there is a problem), sometimes I leave even earlier and don't, sometimes I WFH on a Friday and spend 3 hours in the middle of the day getting the train out to my parents for a long weekend then the afternoon is half heartedly watching emails while drinking coffee with my parents.

At the end of the day as long as I'm not inconveniencing colleagues then it comes down to does my output make me worth my salary.

Many employers allow that already, i’d be surprised if all the companies that self selected into this experiment didn’t already have the facility for an employee to arrange this.

It’s not the same thing though. It’s avoiding the pressure to crush wasteful time in the working day (think 30 person zoom meetings that consist of 2 people talking and 28 people quietly doing emails). This pressure is unavoidable with the typical “100 per cent pay, for 80 per cent of the time, while maintaining 100 per cent productivity” 4 day approach.

Oh, absolutely! I have all the regular breaks etc. When I said "go out to lunch" I meant it more in the sense of "go out for a _loooong_ lunch involving a few courses and a bottle or two of wine". ;)

Depends on what you consider a traditional 5-day week; not long ago, people were Expected to be in the office all day, often a commute away. And it's only white collar workers that have gained the priviledge of working from home.

With children, one or both parents often have to sacrifice their lunch breaks to get 40 hours of work in while still dropping off/picking up children at school, activities, etc.

If you home and workplace or your partners workplace is even a short distance apart the travel time can make it impractical

honest answer: both my partner and I work, but she works four days per week to balance childcare. If I worked four days then we would have a whole day together to enjoy hanging out with our son.

My commute to the office is over an hour (London, England) from my home, so returning home for lunch is not an option.

In NL, working less hours (24, 32 or 36 hours) is normalized, to the point where some families have a schedule where either parent has one day a week off, the kids spend one day at their grandparents, and the remaining two days in day care (or something to that effect).

The 4-day work week is fairly normalized here to try and balance careers for both parents with raising children, so these articles seem really weird to me. The tradeoff is you get paid for 32 hours instead of 40, and any other benefits (holidays, bonuses, expenses, etc) are adjusted according to how much of a percentage of full-time (40 hours/week) you work.

> I love that I [..] can (shock!) go out to lunch with my wife during the week while the kids are at school

But slowly this also applies to schools. The teachers would want 4 day workweek. and then the kids would also love to have 4 days instead of 5 days. This would start happening across. The restaurants, grocery shops everywhere and people who come on off days need to be compensated accordingly and then the various other fall outs. :)

> I love that I [..] can (shock!) go out to lunch with my wife during the week while the kids are at school

Rather highlights that restaurants won't get by on a four day week.

Pick a different 4 days like they do for weekends.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com