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It's time to implement a 4-day workweek
In May, Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur and former Democratic presidential candidate, floated the idea of implementing a four-day workweek to better accommodate working Americans in a time of uncertainty, saying a shorter workweek could have mental-health benefits for employees.
There's not one overarching definition of a four-day workweek. "There are different models for the shortened week, some of which envision the same output condensed into fewer hours while others simply imagine longer hours spread over fewer days," a Washington Post report said.
Some involve a three-day weekend, while others mean a day off midweek.
[...] "It would help get us off of this hamster wheel that we're on right now, where we're all sort of racing against the clock in service of this giant capital-efficiency machine," Yang said. "And the race is driving us all crazy."
In a Harris poll conducted in late May, 82% of employed US respondents said they would prefer to have a shorter workweek, even if it meant longer workdays.
The idea of a shorter workweek has become so popular in Finland that Prime Minister Sanna Marin has called for employers to allow employees to work only six hours a day, four days a week. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proposed the policy as part of a coronavirus economic recovery effort.
Andrew Barnes, the CEO of Perpetual Guardian, introduced a four-day workweek at his company in New Zealand in 2018.
Barnes, a cofounder of the nonprofit platform 4 Day Week Global and the author of "The 4 Day Week," said he found that "stress levels drop, creativity goes up, team cohesion goes up" under such a policy.[...] Microsoft experimented with a four-day workweek last year at a subsidiary in Japan as part of its "Work-Life Choice Challenge." The subsidiary closed every Friday in August and said it saw productivity jump by 40% compared with the previous year.
I'm somehow attracted to the idea, be it only for the reason the weekends are the most productive time for me, with no meeting interruptions (large grin)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:40PM (8 children)
If nothing else, twice the workers means twice the liability - odds of an HR oriented lawsuit. Every person you hire is a potential existential risk to your company, more people = more risk.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:08AM (7 children)
How? The average person can only fuck up so much in any given amount of time. How is that chance higher at 2x20 hours than at 1x40?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:23AM (5 children)
Give Bill Clinton two hot interns instead of one... see the problem?
It's more of a bad apple thing, most hot interns won't be taking down the company, but... sooner or later you'll tie into one that can twist it around into a real problem - whether it's a slip and fall artist, a delivery driver who "follows all company policy and training" and still ends up killing people while on duty, Richard Pryor in Superman III... the major concern in interviews is "cultural fit" and that is a big overlap with "won't come in here and trash the place from the inside out." Hire twice as many bodies, now twice as many people have access to the inside, and if it's one in a million new hires that will take you down from the inside - hiring twice as many people does double your odds - maybe a bit more since people who work until they're exhausted don't have as much time and energy to plot and scheme...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:18PM (4 children)
If you assume that people are working against you, do not hire them. I'm sorry, but when did it actually become normal to assume that people working for you are trying to screw you over?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:15PM
Most of them aren't, in an organization of 100,000+ employees you can safely bet more than one of them are.
Even in smaller organizations, each new hire is a risk - low risk, but each new hire is a risk, and that risk is just about impossible to completely evaluate/eliminate during a reasonable interview process.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @01:33AM (2 children)
When people started working for other people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @03:46AM (1 child)
Ah ha, some insights into the conservative brain. Go easy on that amygdala little guy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @03:53AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:13PM
Not all risk is per hour. You also have the problem that the average person is going to find a second 20 hour a week job.