Trialling a four day working week

marinersfan said:
I do 3 12s, that's perfectly fine with me.
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That sound tough to me, but hard to argue with a 4-day weekend!

We discussed whether we would still opt for a 4-day week if required to work the full 37.5 hours but decided the 5th day would simply be spent recovering from work!
 
Simmy said:
That sound tough to me, but hard to argue with a 4-day weekend!

We discussed whether we would still opt for a 4-day week if required to work the full 37.5 hours but decided the 5th day would simply be spent recovering from work!
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Friday, Saturday, Sunday. 18:00 - 06:00.
Been doing it nearly 20 years.
 
I work a 4 day week & have been doing so for the past 8 and half years, my shifts are just over 11 hours long so even tho its only a 4 day week it feels like a long week all the same.
 
PapaLazaru said:
I think my productivity would increase on a 4 day week. Less work 'days' and more practical time off.
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My brothers company is trying/doing 4 day weeks for at least some of it's staff, with what used to be the third shift spread across the other two.

In their case IIRC it was a change brought about by the need to cut energy costs as they work with plastics and had machines they were having to leave "hot" for much of each shift but not running (they take long enough to clear for shut down, and to warm up again it wasn't practical to turn them off for a few hours at a time).

Apparently most of the affected staff are very much enjoying the change as it means they've always got 3 days off, and if they're doing the shift rotation they always have that 3rd day to help move their sleep patterns.
I suspect if the company tries to change back to 7 day running (which requires the 3 shifts alternating between 4 and 5 days) they'll have a mutiny, especially as by the sounds of it they got back some of the experienced staff who had previously left when they made the change.

Brother in law loves it as it means he has Friday to relax and recover a bit so can enjoy the weekend more, it also gives him an extra standard day at home to get jobs done around the house without it eating into to his relaxation time too much.
I think the downside is that he apparently works about a shift or two less a month, but that is rather offset by apparently a slight payrise and saving on travel costs.
 
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Werewolf said:
My brothers company is trying/doing 4 day weeks for at least some of it's staff, with what used to be the third shift spread across the other two.

In their case IIRC it was a change brought about by the need to cut energy costs as they work with plastics and had machines they were having to leave "hot" for much of each shift but not running (they take long enough to clear for shut down, and to warm up again it wasn't practical to turn them off for a few hours at a time).

Apparently most of the affected staff are very much enjoying the change as it means they've always got 3 days off, and if they're doing the shift rotation they always have that 3rd day to help move their sleep patterns.
I suspect if the company tries to change back to 7 day running (which requires the 3 shifts alternating between 4 and 5 days) they'll have a mutiny, especially as by the sounds of it they got back some of the experienced staff who had previously left when they made the change.

Brother in law loves it as it means he has Friday to relax and recover a bit so can enjoy the weekend more, it also gives him an extra standard day at home to get jobs done around the house without it eating into to his relaxation time too much.
I think the downside is that he apparently works about a shift or two less a month, but that is rather offset by apparently a slight payrise and saving on travel costs.
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I work for a plastics company too, in extrusion .We very rarely have a line down, but when we do and we put the heats off they take hours and hours to reheat. After they've been off for a shutdown half a shift can be lost waiting for machines to come up to running temps.
The heaters in the machine only do part of the job, the rest is process/shear/friction heat.
 
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My workplace proposed a 4 day week, despite being a 7 day business.

But they wanted to extend the hours worked on each day to 10 hours, not including breaks & non-driving work (vehicle checks etc).

When drivers actually looked at it, we'd have been working almost 12hrs per shift x 4 instead of the 8.5hrs x 5 meaning an extra 6hrs a week give or take.
 
I work 40 hour weeks, 4 days a week, 1 hour break each day (so basically 11 hours)

Have the option for 5 days with 8 hour days but prefer the extra day.

Could even drop down in hours if we wanted but prefer the extra money and less driving/parking costs.
 
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Aside from any impact from the business not being contactable 5 (or more) days a week, and that is easily sorted these days when people can do it from home, etc. I can't really see any issues in a general sense.

We've kind of fallen into it at work, though we have 7 day operations with overlap, due to a number of people either approaching or reaching retirement but deciding not to retire and dropping down a day instead - which has driven a larger change around a 4 day week, though we have some people doing 5 days still. But that is 4 days work for 4 days pay not 5. It has opened up opportunities for additional part-time roles as well.

I've been doing a 4 day week since the lifting of the lockdowns due to people leaving causing a problem with covering weekends - so I do extra hours on a Saturday and Sunday and have an extra day off during the week as a trade-off.

Overall the work-life balance is definitely better but it isn't quite the same here as putting 5 days work into 4 so hard to gauge productivity in that light. Personally I'd say I tend to work pretty solidly through 4 days when before the 1st and/or last day of a 5 day week definitely wasn't as productive as it could be.
 
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Simmy said:
Hi all,

I'm in a fortunate position in that I've convinced my managing director to trial a 4-day working week, starting next year. It's based on 100% pay for 85% working hours (32-hour week) and, most importantly, retaining 100% productivity. The trial will be for 3-months initially, extending another 3-months if all is well. I'm already planning my days off!

We have questions and concerns which we've tried to mitigate before the trial begins but we won't know if it works unless we try it; we'll inevitably discover some issues during it! The difficulty will be retaining 100% productivity with 5 fewer working hours per week; I believe there's easily 5-hours of wasted time in everyone's working week and that we need to review ways we can work smarter. There is some trepidation as it's such a fantastic opportunity and we're eager to make it work.

That said, does anyone here work for a UK based company that is trialling or has trialled a 4-day week (whether you stayed with it or went back to 5-days)?

If so, would anyone be willing to answer a few questions from a company and/or personal perspective? Bonus points if it's a small company and/or a distributor! I don't expect anyone to reveal their place of work.

Thank you.

PS - I missed quite a key part which is that the company will fully close for one day per week. Largely because we're not large enough to spread the 4-day work week and stay open 5-days.
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The 4 day working week isn't especially common in NZ but I think we were one of the first to give it a serious go and by some fairly big players, too. I don't fit into your 'small company and/or distributor' criteria but happy to answer a couple of questions if that's useful.

:)
 
I have been doing a 88% hrs 4 day week since my lad was born. personally however I don't believe you will be able to be 100% productive over the 4 days long term. yes we don't work 100% all the time usually but I don't think you will over 4 days either.

in my case not a problem. it was a work life balance thing that worked for me and my team as our funding was cut and it helped not lose a member of staff.

IE I took a 12% paycut as well.
this notion of cutting your hrs but not your pay , imo it's great if you can wangle it , good luck to you but it's a massive wheeze imo

our kids school has done it by giving themselves an extra week holiday in term time and tbh it cheeses me off.... we have to find cover for that week or take holiday short notice with no holiday clubs etc
 
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Pawnless Endgame said:
@Simmy - if you had say 25 days a year annual leave, will that be pro-rata'd to 20 days a year when it's a 4-day week?
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Interesting actually, my missus works a 4 day week but still gets her full entitlement of 25 days holiday. As she does four long days (10 hours), rather than five (8 hours), overall it's the same number of hours so presumably that's why she's entitled to the same annual leave allowance.

I can't see my company (big global software/hardware company) ever doing something like this as I imagine a good 90%+ of our customers will be working at least 5 days, so having the entire company off for one day would become disruptive. Taking the other approach of having different people off on different days also wouldn't work so well, if you needed collaboration across three people who all had to have different days off then that would only leave 2 days a week to do so.
 
sounds great, I am doing the budget version, condensed hours (9.25h x 4) and I generally have Fri or Wed off. Also get flex around that too which is nice.
 
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I work a 4 day week and the shifts are under 11 hours and I love it, the extra day off makes all the difference.

Some "weeks" I work 8 shifts consecutively but wind up with a 6 day long weekend.

I can't say I ever feel that I need the first day to recover, what jobs are you doing that require that, working down the pit?
 
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