Workers Want a Four-Day Week. Companies Should Too

> - if people can do 5 days' work in 4, can they also do 4 days' work in 3? What's special about 4 days? Will work scope down until it becomes true that it could be done in 3 days, just as 5 days' work seems to have scoped down to be doable in 4?

My suspicion is that the time spent per week at work or 'doing' work is no longer the limiting factor for productivity in a vast swathe of knowledge economy jobs.

I have a theory that the human brain can only give-out so much creativity before it needs a bit of freedom to wander. I suspect that knowledge workers have big periods of time where their minds are effectively 'resting'/rejuvinating but these people are obliged to remain in the office and look like they are working.

Perhaps the four day week projects are showing that if people are given the choice, they can exchange some of that resting time for free time?

If companies need to maximally be available to customers, then why aren't all customer-oriented businesses open 24 hours?

Customers are spoiled with cheap unsustainable wages, especially the service industry where people really don't want to put in 8/10 hour days but are doing that because there is no other option.

The equitable future of that type of work is appointment-based. Meaning you as the customer go into a website and make an appointment to do what you need to do--and if you really derive value out of having a person do something for you, then this should not be a problem including any charges associated.

It would work out great for e.g. retail returns; go on to an app, make an available appointment, upload your receipt, and then go do the exchange/return. No lines so a better experience for the customer, and it would also firewall-off invalid returns and a good number of abuse attempts.

A really good pizzeria not to far from me has moved to this model successfully. If you want a pizza, you grab a timeslot, then pick it up. You can't just walk in and expect to get one 30 minutes from when you walk-in at a random time (unless they're free). The pizza is that good. This won't work for low-quality products, of course.

> - this only applies to task-focused jobs; e.g. the service industry still needs people to work all the time customers might turn up

This is a problem which service industry jobs have already solved by scheduling employees in shifts. A typical fast food restaurant may be open 18+ hours a day, 7 days a week, but they certainly aren't requiring each of their employees to work those hours.

While still knowledge work, when I started my career I was working as a sys admin in a data center. It required 24x7x365 support. No one worked 5 days. All weekday shifts were 4x10. All weekend shifts were 3x12.

It doesn’t get to a 32 hour week, but it does still give a 3 or 4 day working week. I don’t see why this wouldn’t work for other support or customer facing roles.

Many types of businesses are closed on random weekdays, Monday is a popular day to be closed for businesses that operate on that weekend, and they seem to make it work. Ones I’ve called often have an answering service for those days.

Where I was at, on holidays we’d run a skeleton staff of 2 people to keep things going, with on-call if anything big happened.

I don’t think anything is special about 4 days, just baby steps. I personally think I was most productive on the 3x12 schedule. It let me hyper focus on work, and really have long stretches of deep work without interruption, while also giving me adequate time to rest and recover from that. I think I’d get much more done if I moved back to that, personally. Working 5x8, as I do now, isn’t that useful. Half the day is full of meetings, and as soon as I start to dig into something, the day is over. What should take a day ends up taking weeks.

I’m not necessarily looking to cut hours, but more to get more heads down working time, without working free OT. I actually found 4x10 to be the worst, 3x12 was the best, for me.

> how do companies...

> Do you need...

> Will work scope down...

Sounds to me like a list of problems for market forces to solve.

This argument can be applied equally against the weekend so I'm not sure it holds that much water. We've figured out how to have people work 5 out of 7 days, what drastically changes if it becomes 4? What if it had always been 4?

But to answer your question about coverage, $dayjob handles that with an on-call rotation and moving shifts for customer support.

A 4 day work week is a great step in the right direction. These things can be figured out on a case by case basis--many businesses are already running on sub 5 day work weeks, or their work weeks are abnormal (Tues-Sun, Wed-Sat, etc.). But, yes, there will need to be some businesses who retain the 5 day work weeks.

However, the benefit is that a large percentage of workers will have an extra day per week to focus on family, hobbies, engaging in the local economy. That outweighs any of the concerns you bring up.

Most of the Netherlands banks have switched to 4 dat workweeks, sure you don't get as much work done on 4 days but it sure is nice to have an extra day off:)

The less than 400k population is a good sample size, however, their main revenue comes from tourism, aluminum smelting, and fisheries, and they have a relatively large source of geothermal and hydropower with a very homogenous population (>80% Icelandic). Data centers are about 1% of its GDP. Even Iceland needs barkeeps and restaurant workers to work at least 5 days/week with restaurants in touristy areas open 7 days/week with shorter days on Sunday. Having worked a life of manual labor and white-collar jobs, sometimes both in the same job, the 4-day work week is really for specific types of industry or work. Tech, for sure, but not the food service industry...

1) not every employee at every company is a programmer, even companies that employ programmers, which most don’t.

2) not every programmer is a remote employee

3) it’s sort of weird to not read an article but comment on it and make generalizations about the working patterns of all people based entirely on your personal situation

Note that 4 day work here typically implies 4×8 hours, i.e. a reduction in hours for the same pay. This is how the trial worked in the UK, and is what most groups I've seen are campaigning for.

The goal is not just to rearrange work hours around the week, but to reduce work hours overall.

I'm not an advocate of 4-day work week, but this argument always makes me laugh.

What is it you think happens on Saturday? Do you think those baristas are working 7 days/week?

That's how Sundays work in some European countries - businesses, shops and some restaurants are closed, with a few exceptions (depending on the country ofc). Doesn't automatically mean one can't spend the time well.

It'd be nice if I could go out to eat on Fridays, but if everything just shut down on Friday I'd personally be good with that, too - I can imagine a world where nearly everything except maybe emergency services just took a day off. I would welcome the guilt-free opportunity to do absolutely nothing "productive" for one day a week.

Service company employees tend to work in shifts and not every employee works every shift, therefore they’re able to cover every day and shift - but with different people. Look at the people at your coffee shop sometimes and you’ll notice they’re not always the same people.

You've… never been out to lunch on a Saturday?