How do you feel about a 4 day work week

As in doing all your hours in 4 days. It makes so much sense when commuting especially. Say 8.30 til 6.

I can understand the reluctance from employers if team members are doing diff shifts effectively. But i can see the benefits too.

How would you go about engineering such a situation?

Yeah lots of places do flexi time. It is a great system for many workplaces

so people can juggle child care, personal commitments, and not need to take unpaid time off work.

Give people Wednesdays off, they need a mid-week break.

I find i can do 90% of work on tues, wed, thurs. The other days just seem less naturally productive. I noticed how friday afternoon its hard to get hold of people!

This 9-5 mon to friday thing is a bit out dated.

---------- Post added 01-02-2015 at 12:10 ----------

Fordism..times have changed. It was predicted technology would make our jobs easier. It just seems to have raised the bar.

As in doing all your hours in 4 days. It makes so much sense when commuting especially. Say 8.30 til 6.

 

I can understand the reluctance from employers if team members are doing diff shifts effectively. But i can see the benefits too.

 

How would you go about engineering such a situation?

But do your customers only work 4 days per week?

I think its a fine approach, providing you can still serve your c customers and not everyone wants Monday, Saturday or Friday off.

But do your customers only work 4 days per week?

This is one of the disadvantages to Businesses and the reason why employers are so reluctant to change from a 5 day work week.

I can totally see the problem, If you are client facing it's hard to justify being offline for even 1 day a week.

It reminds me of that guy who outsourced his own job to china:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/16/developer_oursources_job_china/

ubermaus - I presume from your comments you have never worked in a production environment. Most production jobs work shifts 24/7.

In the waste industry people don't do 9-5 Monday to Friday either. Most drivers start around 6- 7am Monday to Friday, some work Saturdays on a regular basis.

Some production jobs are days and afternoons but most work around the clock with a shutdown for week or two mid year and a week or two at Christmas. Most of my customers had two weeks off at Christmas this year as it takes two or three days to get everything back up and running, especially if you run production requiring extreme heat or steam generation.

Some jobs can be done on flexi time or job share but I doubt many could work just a four day week. Quite a few companies only work half a day on Friday but it does restrict certain operations to the four days Monday to Thursday which can cause problems with uneven workload or difficulty slotting in with everything else that needs to be done.

I worked in a laboratory for years and six day working weeks caused a 'problem'. Some tests used to take one day, some two and others five. It was bad enough trying to work around having Sundays off.

As in doing all your hours in 4 days. It makes so much sense when commuting especially. Say 8.30 til 6.

 

I can understand the reluctance from employers if team members are doing diff shifts effectively. But i can see the benefits too.

 

How would you go about engineering such a situation?

I used to work at Apollo Travel at Rawmarsh in the mid 90's and we all worked a full-time 4 day week from 8am - 8pm on a rota. With breaks, it made a 40 hour week with three days off. I really loved it at the time, but it wouldn't suit everyone.

ubermaus - I presume from your comments you have never worked in a production environment. Most production jobs work shifts 24/7.

 

In the waste industry people don't do 9-5 Monday to Friday either. Most drivers start around 6- 7am Monday to Friday, some work Saturdays on a regular basis.

 

Some production jobs are days and afternoons but most work around the clock with a shutdown for week or two mid year and a week or two at Christmas. Most of my customers had two weeks off at Christmas this year as it takes two or three days to get everything back up and running, especially if you run production requiring extreme heat or steam generation.

 

Some jobs can be done on flexi time or job share but I doubt many could work just a four day week. Quite a few companies only work half a day on Friday but it does restrict certain operations to the four days Monday to Thursday which can cause problems with uneven workload or difficulty slotting in with everything else that needs to be done.

 

I worked in a laboratory for years and six day working weeks caused a 'problem'. Some tests used to take one day, some two and others five. It was bad enough trying to work around having Sundays off.

Only briefly chez. Like i say its not perfect for employers.

---------- Post added 02-02-2015 at 23:34 ----------

I used to work at Apollo Travel at Rawmarsh in the mid 90's and we all worked a full-time 4 day week from 8am - 8pm on a rota. With breaks, it made a 40 hour week with three days off. I really loved it at the time, but it wouldn't suit everyone.

Sounds spot on.

Its not only employers ubermaus - what about customers or potential customers?

As I have said, this is already accommodated in some work places by job share, flexible working or shifts. It doesn't even work for all office jobs where interaction is needed with others.

I've done it before, when working on a contract away from home. Makes for long days, but getting home on a Thursday night and having a three day weekend can be worth it.