https://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-business-says-a-4-day-week-with-pay-for-5-works/
The idea sprang from research that found people are typically engaged at work for fewer than three hours a day, said Perpetual Guardian founder Andrew Barnes. He said he started to think about the pressures that employees are under -- sick kids or waiting for the plumber -- and how those stresses affect productivity and cut back on hours spent in the office.
For some of us, less stress results in better sleep, resulting in fewer mistakes and more productivity.
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Work Fewer Hours, yet be More Productive
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @05:43AM (3 children)
Years ago, working as an engineer for megacorp, we had a continual stream of employees on technical exchange from all over the world. Primarily England, Ireland, France, Germany, Japan and China.
Most told me that the big difference in working environments was that in the US, you go into work at 8am, start BS'ing with coworkers, surf the internet and stick around for 12 hours to finish your work while in Europe, you came into your office, sat down and no socializing until lunch, then back to work until 5pm when everyone went home. I've never worked overseas so no first hand experience.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @05:53AM
My father worked at Boeing engineering during part of WWII. His office manager noticed that the typing pool workers were a little faster after a break, and started giving the typists longer and more frequent breaks during the day. Productivity kept going up, more typing got done each day. I think eventually they got to 50% break time and 50% work time but the typists started to complain--they had to type quickly during the short time they were allowed. Otherwise they didn't feel like they were putting in their fair share of work.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Sunday July 22 2018, @07:42AM
Did a stint coding in a French bank, pre-internet (existed, but few had it at home). People worked continuously from 8 to 12 and from 1 to 5, with a 15-minute break in the middle of each period, where yapping was at the coffee machine.
Interestingly, that matched the actual school hours at high school and engineering school. As if having training to work at the right rhythm could be important.
There was a lot more work done than in my recent US companies, where you're being distracted every few minutes by random chatter and messages.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday July 22 2018, @10:42PM
I'm a USian, and at one contract engineering company I worked for, the general communication and asking for help and chatter got so bad they had to institute a 2-hour quiet time in the mornings. It wasn't the interruptions that were so disruptive, it was the constant anxiety about when the next interruption would come. People still talked and asked for help, just quieter.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 22 2018, @06:09AM (5 children)
The day that management understands how this all works, the workforce will be slashed, drastically. Cameras will be installed at every desk, and any slackers will be fired immediately. You won't even get time to clean out your desk - security will pop out of nowhere, and frog march your ass out the door. Your file will reflect that you were fired for theft of company time. That will make you ineligible for most benefits, starting with unemployment. That's not entirely sarcasm, either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @02:13PM (3 children)
I knew an ass who came in late, left early, if he felt like it, never did much for years. No one cared.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday July 22 2018, @02:38PM (1 child)
Government worker, by chance?
;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday July 22 2018, @05:56PM
I'll tell you, it was VERY RARE for Obama to actually spend a full day in Washington. A day when he didn't campaign, fund raise or play golf was very shocking. We payed for Obama's travel so he could fundraise millions so Democrats could run on lies. Then we payed for his golf. While our wonderful president was out playing golf all day, the TSA was falling apart, just like our government! Airports a total disaster! I told Obama, if he'd resign from office, thereby doing a great service to the country -- I would give him free lifetime golf at any one of my courses!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @03:35PM
I worked with someone who had two jobs. Would clock in in the morning, walk across the street to his other job and then come back in the evening to clock out making a couple of appearances through out the day. He was caught after only 2 months though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by qzm on Sunday July 22 2018, @10:15PM
The problem is right now, a small fraction of the staff generally is already doing most of the work, and not slacking noisy of the time.
Yes, the useless slackers wouldn't lose much by not being at work, however the few actual productive workers would, while being forced to follow the same structure, which would be very bad for the company.
Of course the slackers assume everyone is being add slack as them, but cannot understand why a few are much more productive.
Another example of where collectivism and treating everyone as identical just doesn't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @07:16AM (1 child)
I am way less stressed in the office than at home. Fuck home. I would live at the office if I could.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @09:10AM
Well then, if you start spending more than 8 hours a day in your cubicle we will start deducting rent from your paycheck.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday July 22 2018, @01:37PM (1 child)
Managers are of course noted for significantly stupid beliefs. For instance, many really do believe slaves make better, more reliable workers than free people. And, they don't quite realize or understand that they believe in slavery, and certainly won't admit to it, not in the Land of the Free. A closely related belief is that people are by nature lazy and have to be prodded and goaded to get work done, and that they will goof off whenever the boss isn't watching. In the dynamic of carrot vs stick, they believe far more in the stick.
A century ago, getting a majority on board with the idea of the 40 hour work week was huge, and not easily done. Before that, they would have workers putting in absolutely insane hours, like 12 hours/day every day of the week, except Sunday when you only had to work 8 hours so you had time to go to church. Day of rest, you know. Management had to be shown, over and over, that productivity was so much better that overall, more work actually got done than if the workers put in significantly more hours. It's counterintuitive-- surely if productivity was only a little less, the extra hours would be more than enough to raise the overall output above that of the 40 hour/week crowd? But now it seems those findings have been forgotten, and a new generation of managers is learning that all over again.
It's the mistakes that destroy productivity. It takes only one serious mistake to waste a whole lot of hours, and mistakes happen a lot more often when workers are tired. Bad mistakes are like finding out, 3/4 of the way through your Marathon run, that you're racing down the wrong race track, took a wrong turn somewhere early.
It's then all too typical for management to whine about the need for sleep, and wish they could find workers who could do with less. Another unfair wish is for workers to stay single and never have those distractions and timesinks otherwise known as children. For the women workers, they begrudge accommodating those who become pregnant, and would rather have no women at all on the workforce than put up with that. The potty break is another interruption that the unreasonable manager hates, and they'll get all suspicious that workers are taking extended breaks for that and want to time them and even spy on them in the bathroom, for evidence that they are slacking, of course! Something else that quietly happened was the elimination of the paid lunch break. It used to be "working 9 to 5", just like the song says. Somehow that was changed to 8 to 5 with an unpaid hour break for lunch. And then, to show your dedication, it wouldn't hurt to work through your lunch hour, stay at your post and gobble down a few granola bars during a 5 minute break and calling that lunch.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pdfernhout on Sunday July 22 2018, @10:30PM
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep [goodreads.com]
"An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming. Within the brain, sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming mollifies painful memories and creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge to inspire creativity."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday July 22 2018, @02:40PM (1 child)
I believe in the 'walk around with a clipboard and look worried' idea: works well for when you're just plain tired or brain dead.
The 'walk around' gives you time to think and relax which leads to higher productivity, eventually.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Informative) by RS3 on Sunday July 22 2018, @10:48PM
For you Millenials, a "clipboard" was a 1950s iPad / tablet-like device. They had trouble getting the touch-screen to work, so you had to use a stylus called a "pen" or "pencil", and a type of "WORM" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once_read_many [wikipedia.org] memory called "paper". If you used a "pencil" you could partially erase and re-write the WORM, but with proper investigative work the erased data could be decoded.