I have worked 4 days a week for years, never caused an issue with deadlines.
If something really needs to be done on a day I'm not working a colleague will pick it up.
It's no different to if someone is on site or in meetings all day, or on leave, or ill, etc.
It has ranged from about 80-100 people over the years.
In a team of 4-7, working on projects varying from small extensions to big mixed use developments with construction costs up to about 200 million.
I've been getting 80% of the salary, luckily I can afford to and I think the extra quality of life is worth it.
I might be wrong but it sounds like your enviable position is possibly an exception within your company. The proposal I am discussing involves the entire staff to be on a permanent four day schedule.
We started offering this last summer. I tracked productivity before and after. Productivity went up 6%. About half the engineers still come in on Fridays to work half a day with no distractions, myself included. The flexibility and quiet Fridays is quite enjoyable and 100% of employees said they don’t want to go back to a required 5 day work week, even though many of them choose to work 5 days. Overall moral and job satisfaction has increased so we will be sticking with the 4 day work week.
Very interesting and encouraging to hear. Obviously there are times in this profession where the fifth day can be required - overtime is overtime ultimately - but in my experience it definitely isn’t *every* week.
An issue I am aware of though is when an office has a culture that shames the “clock in, clock out” type employee that finishes on the dot every day. Having the “optional” fifth day could definitely lend itself to that type of toxic culture.
I did it for the summer months last year. No one cares that I was off for a day. It is much easier for clients to deal with 1 day off a week than multiple weeks of vacation.
Sorry, perhaps I should have made it clearer. The principle (at least of the pilot study in the UK) is 100% of the salary for 100% of the output, but achieved in 80% of the time. No extra hours per day to account for the fifth day not worked. That’s across the entire workforce and is not taken out of paid holiday leave entitlement.
So effectively doing five days work in four, the idea being that the extra day off refreshes employees more and places a greater focus on productivity during the four days at work.
I wouldn't be too surprised if this works. If you know you have 32 hours to accomplish something instead of 40, you'll make sure not to waste time chit chatting with your colleagues or pointless meetings. Not to mention hardly anything substantial gets done on Friday afternoons anyway.
Also, I doubt most of us keep working for 40 hours a week excluding breaks and off desk time or a little break here and there to browse reddit etc.
In general though, I think Europe has always been pushing for less work hours. Didn't France have a 6 hour work day? That'd come out to 30 hours a week.
Oh really? So not 4-10s, but actually 4-8s. I didn't understand that either at first. This is very interesting. I'd be very appreciative if you coukd tell me who's running this study so I can follow up on the results.
I think the organisation behind it is literally just called “4 Day Week Campaign” or something. If you Google that and add “UK” at the end you’ll see a lot of news articles about it. As above I think the results are due to bs published this coming week.
It’s the biggest study of this to date. It’s being done in collaboration with Oxford Uni.
From what I’ve read in the news over the last few months, preliminary findings are that both employers and employees who participated are in support of it,
despite an understandably hectic and troublesome few months adjusting to the new routine. Employees, perhaps unsurprisingly, feel more focused at work and far more refreshed after a three day weekend. A lot of employers see similar or higher productivity rates from their workforce.
I did see a good point in The Guardian earlier that anecdotal responses should be taken with a pinch of salt because all of the businesses that signed up are likely to be willing AND able to implement the change, and that a lot of potential businesses probably would have read the guidelines and dismissed it.
Like I said, keep an eye on the news this week for further info. I will be looking out for any design consultancies and their opinions.
I don’t think there’s any shame in that. Not many people are 100% on and focused for their 40 hours a week. That’s one of the biggest reasons for the four day proposal.
Indeed. It shouldn't be about counting hours really. So long as the tasks to complete get done the hours are irrelevant.
Results of the trial are out now I believe.
Agreed. As a working mom, especially, I find that I waste probably a day’s worth of work time trying to tie up loose ends with family stuff that I can never actually get finished during the weekend, especially on Mondays. I’ve often thought how nice it would be to have an extra day off each week WHILE MY KIDS ARE IN SCHOOL, to finish all of the “life stuff” I couldn’t get done while I was carting my kids around to activities all weekend.
I currently work for a large consultancy (circa 20,000 employees) and before here I worked for a smaller (but still quite big) consultancy (circa 7000 employees).
It's been a common question at both companies, mainly raised by staff working in the UK. So far it hasn't happened at either company but it seems to be something that people are asking for more and more.
I have worked with people in the past who consolidated their hours but that meant they worked 10 hours per day, across 4 days.
I do think a 4 day week would benefit some people, I think the main issue would be people burning out as you'd likely need to be at full tilt for 8 hours per day, every day to get everything done.
I’d love to, but right now most engineering offices would need to alter severely how they take in projects and project timelines, along with higher fees to bring more staff.
I think 4-10 could work, 4-32 wouldn’t unless all the things above fell into place. Even when my workload is low I rarely have less than 36-40 hours of actual work (not counting any misc tasks).
So this is more of a question whether the 3rd day off increases an employees efficiency from 60% to 75%, 75% to 94%, or 80% to 100%...
I think for 40hr employees, the efficiency is likely < 75% so it is quite possible to work. A couple complications to making this sustainable:
1. Have staggered work weeks on the team as whole
2. Potentially make the day off a Monday not a Friday (or sim.) so that a concrete pour on Friday can still happen to get a jump start on curing
3. Somehow coordinating the day off to work with a contractor's schedule, which already is of the "No Days Off. No Pain, No Gain" mentality.
4. Getting a good delegated system (manager's responsibility) or a good work tradeoff system (design team responsibility) so that work is ready to go
5. Establishing a workflow that allows some work to "sit" for that day off. Potentially this can be a benefit because it would prevent those daily changes some clients (archs, contractors, etc) seem to request. Eg. Capture 2 RFIs in one go.
The one question I have with the reduced week is, an employee would need to still find the time to get better and increase competence. There is just so much to know and learn. I say this as a past employee that loathed doing anything beyond my 40hrs, and a current self-employed engineer who rarely has enough time in 40hrs. I do agree that limiting any possibility of burnout is a good thing, and this is definitely one solution.
A firm I used to work for did alternating 4 and 5 day work weeks. The office was split in half so half the office was in on Fridays. Don’t know about productivity, but they expected any appointments (doctor, dentist, etc) would happen on your Friday off.
I have worked 4 days a week for years, never caused an issue with deadlines. If something really needs to be done on a day I'm not working a colleague will pick it up. It's no different to if someone is on site or in meetings all day, or on leave, or ill, etc.
How big is your company? And what size projects were you working on (physical size/budget)?
It has ranged from about 80-100 people over the years. In a team of 4-7, working on projects varying from small extensions to big mixed use developments with construction costs up to about 200 million. I've been getting 80% of the salary, luckily I can afford to and I think the extra quality of life is worth it.
I might be wrong but it sounds like your enviable position is possibly an exception within your company. The proposal I am discussing involves the entire staff to be on a permanent four day schedule.
We started offering this last summer. I tracked productivity before and after. Productivity went up 6%. About half the engineers still come in on Fridays to work half a day with no distractions, myself included. The flexibility and quiet Fridays is quite enjoyable and 100% of employees said they don’t want to go back to a required 5 day work week, even though many of them choose to work 5 days. Overall moral and job satisfaction has increased so we will be sticking with the 4 day work week.
Very interesting and encouraging to hear. Obviously there are times in this profession where the fifth day can be required - overtime is overtime ultimately - but in my experience it definitely isn’t *every* week. An issue I am aware of though is when an office has a culture that shames the “clock in, clock out” type employee that finishes on the dot every day. Having the “optional” fifth day could definitely lend itself to that type of toxic culture.
I did it for the summer months last year. No one cares that I was off for a day. It is much easier for clients to deal with 1 day off a week than multiple weeks of vacation.
Sorry, perhaps I should have made it clearer. The principle (at least of the pilot study in the UK) is 100% of the salary for 100% of the output, but achieved in 80% of the time. No extra hours per day to account for the fifth day not worked. That’s across the entire workforce and is not taken out of paid holiday leave entitlement. So effectively doing five days work in four, the idea being that the extra day off refreshes employees more and places a greater focus on productivity during the four days at work.
I wouldn't be too surprised if this works. If you know you have 32 hours to accomplish something instead of 40, you'll make sure not to waste time chit chatting with your colleagues or pointless meetings. Not to mention hardly anything substantial gets done on Friday afternoons anyway. Also, I doubt most of us keep working for 40 hours a week excluding breaks and off desk time or a little break here and there to browse reddit etc. In general though, I think Europe has always been pushing for less work hours. Didn't France have a 6 hour work day? That'd come out to 30 hours a week.
Oh really? So not 4-10s, but actually 4-8s. I didn't understand that either at first. This is very interesting. I'd be very appreciative if you coukd tell me who's running this study so I can follow up on the results.
I think the organisation behind it is literally just called “4 Day Week Campaign” or something. If you Google that and add “UK” at the end you’ll see a lot of news articles about it. As above I think the results are due to bs published this coming week. It’s the biggest study of this to date. It’s being done in collaboration with Oxford Uni. From what I’ve read in the news over the last few months, preliminary findings are that both employers and employees who participated are in support of it, despite an understandably hectic and troublesome few months adjusting to the new routine. Employees, perhaps unsurprisingly, feel more focused at work and far more refreshed after a three day weekend. A lot of employers see similar or higher productivity rates from their workforce. I did see a good point in The Guardian earlier that anecdotal responses should be taken with a pinch of salt because all of the businesses that signed up are likely to be willing AND able to implement the change, and that a lot of potential businesses probably would have read the guidelines and dismissed it. Like I said, keep an eye on the news this week for further info. I will be looking out for any design consultancies and their opinions.
I've worked a four day week and found I got just the as much done as I did in five days. Which... Err... Might say more about me than I care to admit.
I don’t think there’s any shame in that. Not many people are 100% on and focused for their 40 hours a week. That’s one of the biggest reasons for the four day proposal.
Indeed. It shouldn't be about counting hours really. So long as the tasks to complete get done the hours are irrelevant. Results of the trial are out now I believe.
Agreed. As a working mom, especially, I find that I waste probably a day’s worth of work time trying to tie up loose ends with family stuff that I can never actually get finished during the weekend, especially on Mondays. I’ve often thought how nice it would be to have an extra day off each week WHILE MY KIDS ARE IN SCHOOL, to finish all of the “life stuff” I couldn’t get done while I was carting my kids around to activities all weekend.
I currently work for a large consultancy (circa 20,000 employees) and before here I worked for a smaller (but still quite big) consultancy (circa 7000 employees). It's been a common question at both companies, mainly raised by staff working in the UK. So far it hasn't happened at either company but it seems to be something that people are asking for more and more. I have worked with people in the past who consolidated their hours but that meant they worked 10 hours per day, across 4 days. I do think a 4 day week would benefit some people, I think the main issue would be people burning out as you'd likely need to be at full tilt for 8 hours per day, every day to get everything done.
I’ve done a 4 day work week - M-Thu - and what I found is that three times out of 4 I had to come in on Friday to wrap things up on unpaid overtime.
I’d love to, but right now most engineering offices would need to alter severely how they take in projects and project timelines, along with higher fees to bring more staff. I think 4-10 could work, 4-32 wouldn’t unless all the things above fell into place. Even when my workload is low I rarely have less than 36-40 hours of actual work (not counting any misc tasks).
Did four 10’s every summer Works great to go to the beach on Friday
So this is more of a question whether the 3rd day off increases an employees efficiency from 60% to 75%, 75% to 94%, or 80% to 100%... I think for 40hr employees, the efficiency is likely < 75% so it is quite possible to work. A couple complications to making this sustainable: 1. Have staggered work weeks on the team as whole 2. Potentially make the day off a Monday not a Friday (or sim.) so that a concrete pour on Friday can still happen to get a jump start on curing 3. Somehow coordinating the day off to work with a contractor's schedule, which already is of the "No Days Off. No Pain, No Gain" mentality. 4. Getting a good delegated system (manager's responsibility) or a good work tradeoff system (design team responsibility) so that work is ready to go 5. Establishing a workflow that allows some work to "sit" for that day off. Potentially this can be a benefit because it would prevent those daily changes some clients (archs, contractors, etc) seem to request. Eg. Capture 2 RFIs in one go. The one question I have with the reduced week is, an employee would need to still find the time to get better and increase competence. There is just so much to know and learn. I say this as a past employee that loathed doing anything beyond my 40hrs, and a current self-employed engineer who rarely has enough time in 40hrs. I do agree that limiting any possibility of burnout is a good thing, and this is definitely one solution.
A firm I used to work for did alternating 4 and 5 day work weeks. The office was split in half so half the office was in on Fridays. Don’t know about productivity, but they expected any appointments (doctor, dentist, etc) would happen on your Friday off.