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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: 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