🙌 THE 4 DAY WORK WEEK HAS HIT IRELAND WITH ASTONISHING RESULTS. 🙌

[mopinko]

The Irish Findings are as follows:
• 100% of the companies involved are continuing with the 4-Day work week ➡
• 85% of companies which reported data on revenue reported growth in revenue 📈 (1/X)

• The average rating from managers on the productivity and overall experience was 9.2 (positive) 😄
• 100% of employees involved said they would prefer a reduced work schedule 📅
• The study found stress, burnout, fatigue and work-family conflict significant declined 😥 (2/X)

Link to tweet

1 reason i'm sticking it out on twitter is news from ireland. i found this rly interesting.
seems like it would be the thing for the railroads.

[Botany]

1. And in person quality face time has increased too

[jerseyjim]

15. I'm not surprised...

that the 4 day work week results in higher moral and higher productivity,
Unfortunately, in this country, managers and people at the top think that squeezing as much time and effort from their employees is the way to success. The best recent example is Elon Musk's demand for employees to work long hours and perfection is just the norm.
Many employees are also at fault because working long hours is a badge of honor. They BRAG about being a workaholic. I first observed this when I was interning at a division in the company, having come from a more relaxed division of the same company.
It is also interesting to note that the more relaxed division consisted of electrical engineers designing circuits. The few software people were also treated well there.

The workaholic division was all software development and "maintenance", fixing messy programs originated by so-called gurus in research.

I know someone who not only likes being worked to death, but volunteers for EMS. It is a desire to be needed all the time. I think it's sick. They raise the bar of working time so everybody else is expected to compete. I never bought into that. I left at 5 regardless of what people thought. I was willing to put in extra hours when I felt their was a true emergency.

I am long retired, but I am very pleased to see professionals quitting sweat shops and demanding better treatment.

Not all Twitter employees left for one reason or another. One has to be willing to take a risk and, perhaps, settle for less money.
If you don't have time to enjoy it, there is no point in working harder for extra bucks.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

26. Back when the 40 hour work week was introduced, captains of industry pissed and moaned,

saying employees absolutely had to work 12 hours/day for capitalism to succeed. Well. Astonishingly (really not so astonishingly) they discovered that employees working 8 hours were far more productive than those working 12 hours. Huh. Imagine that.

This is among the reasons I'm extremely concerned that these days most nurses work a 12 hour shift. I don't give a flying fuck that you are only working three days a week. I do NOT want to be a patient having a crisis when you are 11 hours into your shift.

I've worked long hours. I know what it is like. I was an airline ticket agent at National Airport in Washington DC in the 1970s. Many times I worked ten, twelve, sometimes even more hours when flights were delayed or cancelled. As miserable as it was, at least no lives depended on my being alert my entire shift. I might have made mistakes, but no one's life was in danger.

Here's something else to contemplate. A while back I read an interesting article, possibly on the NYTimes that talked about the work culture in the world of Apple, and said that the first I-phone would have come to market two years earlier had there not been a culture of working 16-20 hours per day. Two years earlier. Think about that.

No one, no one at all, can work 16 hours a day and be truly productive.

I honestly think that the main reason I am absolutely the healthiest person I know at my age is that I have mostly gotten enough sleep most of my life. Getting enough rest is crucial. My entire life, and I'm now 74 years old, I've done my best to get enough sleep. That has not always been possible, especially during my years at DCA. I more than once worked a scheduled turn-around, getting off at 10pm, being back at the airport at 6am the next day. But if the evening flight ran late, who knows when I'd get off? I still had to be at work at 6am. Heck, one time I actually slept on a cot behind our ticket counter because it would have taken too much time to take the bus back home, then gotten up to take the bus back to the airport. I was better off spending the night. Fortunately, a good friend who worked the overnight shift at one of the rental car companies woke me up in the morning with a cup of coffee (bless you Ollie). When startled passengers looked at me the next morning (mainly those who'd been held overnight when their flight had been cancelled, and were now heading out) and asked in dismay, "Did you spend the night here?" I lied and said no.

Back then I was young, in my 20s, and I could do it. Ahh, youth.

These days? I'm cancelling jury duty because I can't imagine getting up early enough to drive from Santa Fe to Albuquerque to make a 9am jury duty thing.

[Bluethroughu]

2. Doesn't Denmark do something similar with same results+++

[Ocelot II]

3. It would work for a lot of companies, but not railroads or other transportation modes

that have to keep running 24 hours. If you work 5 days a week in an office you know that there are a lot of inefficiencies in the job, and you can probably get the same amount of work done in 4 days. But if your workplace has to be up and running at all times it won't work, because that work can't be condensed into a shorter time span.
I used to work for an airline, and with the exception of some clerical and administrative workers it was staffed all day and all night, including holidays. This didn't apply just to pilots and flight attendants, but to mechanics, dispatchers, instructors, simulator techs, fuelers, caterers, etc. The same is true of railroads: Some number of people have to be at work all the time to keep the trains running and maintained. The problem with the railroads is that they have intentionally staffed their operations so thinly that one line employee's unscheduled sick day will throw off the whole schedule. What they should be doing, and don't want to do, is hire more line employees who can be on call.

[unweird]

4. On call sucks

Seems like a simple challenge to schedule folks to fit whatever schema desired. I’ve seen 12 on / 12 off for 3 days then off for 4 days followed by a week of 12 on/off for 4 days. You can get 24/7 coverage and pay 4 hours OT every two weeks.
There are other ways of slicing the schedules and still maintain 24/7 coverage while giving more than a 2 day break each week. Just takes some imagination, flexibility and a little software to assist management plan accordingly.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. Exactly

There are many, many ways to run a 24 hour operation with 4 day work weeks. Just like they do it with a 5 day work week.

But our Congress won't even give railroad workers leave, so I doubt a 4 day work week will suit the slave drivers of capitalism.

[Old Crank]

30. Mske that Republicans

Won't give workers sick leave.
49 of 50 Dems in the Senate voted yes.

[Ocelot II]

7. The problem has been that the railroads have been trying to save money

by staffing as thinly as possible, which means that they require all PTO to be scheduled far in advance. Of course they could implement a system like you suggest, but no matter how it's done it would require hiring more people and they don't want to do that. The airline I worked for had a scheduling system for pilots that did something like that, because if a pilot is suddenly unavailable a whole flight schedule falls apart, causing delays and expense far in excess than the cost of extra available crews. Maybe the railroads get away with it because you can run a train for days with just a couple of people.

[mopinko]

21. it seems so pennywise and pound foolish.

i get that each head comes w overhead, but for the most part it's hourly work.
it wouldnt cost them that much to add more employees working fewer hours. and so much of their trouble would be solved.

[Jerry2144]

5. I work a 4 ten hour day schedule

It’s nice having every Friday off. The days sometimes feel too long. My biggest complaint is how quickly the weeks fly by. Four days of work and three days of weekend and it’s another week. I now use my vacation time to just slow the clock down instead of take a break from work

[Farmer-Rick]

8. The Irish study did not increase the hours worked each day

If they normally worked 8 hours they continued to work just 8 hours a day on their 4 days.

You basically work a 5 day work week squeezed into 4 days. I would think that would be exhausting.

[intheflow]

10. Depends on the workplace.

My job could easily be done working 30 hours instead of the 37.5 I work now. My coworkers and I spend at least that much time commiserating over how stressful/dysfunctional our workplace is, and someone calls out sick once or twice a week because of the stress, so those of us who make it in are doing their job in addition to our own anyway. Meanwhile, across the board, everyone reports feeling rejuvenated after 3-day holiday weekends. I think if my workplace could plan around staffing for 4 days rather than constantly having daily schedules shuffled around, it would do wonders for both the employees and the organization.

[Skittles]

32. working a 37 hour week would be "rejuvenation" for me

I'm not kidding....

[Lucky Luciano]

18. I would like that, but doubt it's feasible for me.

Harder to include a six mile run plus some weight lifting on that schedule…plus my research is just hard to get good results with at a four day cadence. I would probably log in on my days off to get results that I need so we can implement and monetize my results ASAFP.

We get lots of PTO though. 4 weeks per year plus 2 recharge days per quarter. Another researcher uses PTO to do research without others bothering him. I’m not that dedicated! PTO is for vacations!

[lucca18]

19. I worked a 4 1/2 day schedule.

It was great!
I looked forward to getting off from work by 12 noon on Friday, especially during the summer!
Levi Strauss was a wonderful company to work for!😍

[LuvLoogie]

9. We could remain in solidarity with non-shithole countries

that moderate and fact check social media.

Musk has a trump-like fan base that will dwindle as his self delusion shield evaporates.


As a tangent, among the things that fascinated me about Steve Jobs was that he was a true entrepreneur and great businessman. Add to that his forward vision and the ability to recognize it and promote it in others.

He built and then rescued Apple.

It appears that Elon's chips are being called in. He is abusing his workforce and trying to insulate himself from scrutiny by surrounding himself with their tangible activity, while he continues to Tweet and primp.

[jaxexpat]

11. "seems like it would be the thing for the railroads."

The very concept goes against the whole pulling oneself up by grit, character, self-determination and conveniently located bootstraps. Americans of previous generations were taught, indoctrinated against any sort of socialist thinking like that. We were taught that we should be proud of every minute we have to work hard today and harder tomorrow. They ruint' me and my generation forever the heartless bastards.

As a graduate of such indoctrination, I demand reparations! Think of the profits the railroad requires to maintain its mediocrity.

The last part of that was part 2. The first part was part 1.

[Farmer-Rick]

13. Thanks for the carefully identified sarcasm

Very specific, I must say.

I find you both amusing and enlightening.

Keep it up.

[COL Mustard]

12. We have a four day work week.

You just have to show up on Fridays to see that's true!

[mopinko]

20. lol.

been a long time since i had a 9-5, but that's my recollection as well.

[Johnny2X2X]

14. Nothing astonishing about it

We’ve known for decades a 4 day work week is better for business and workers alike. We’ve known for decades a 30-35 hour work week leads to more production than a 40+ hour work week. Work life balance is good for businesses.

Managers and CEOs just refuse to accept these basic facts.

[onetexan]

16. The US needs to be paying attention

We have the worst labor laws of all the developed nations.

[Ilsa]

29. Yeah, like American business pays attention to Healthcare access.

We think we know the only way to do shit right.

[LisaM]

17. I wonder if it's the three-day weekends that produces the results.

I worked at a (college) bookstore many moons ago that was open six days a week. We would work M-F one week, get a three day weekend, then Tu-Sat the next week and get one day off. Saturdays were very relaxed, and we could invariably find someone to switch days with, which management was very tolerant of.

It was a great system, and knowing there was a three-day weekend every other week was really nice.

[Mr.Bill]

22. It wouldn't increase production in mechanized manufacuring.

Auto assembly lines, for instance. You can only build a finite number of cars in eight hours. It would decrease production by 20%.

[Progressive dog]

23. A recent article about 4 day weeks in Ireland

goes into detail on the problems with this scheme. It also notes that only 6 pc of the Irish workforce in on a four day week. I worked for a manufacturer in the US where we worked four nine hour days in the summer and only four hours on Fridays. I would not want to work 10 hour days, 4 days per week.

Hays said its research suggests that around 6pc of Irish workplaces have already implemented a four-day working week, with 4pc doing so on a permanent basis and 2pc doing so on a trial basis.

“At face value, for many employees, the prospect of a four-day working week is extremely attractive. However, what this looks like in practise may be dependent on the industry and jurisdiction.

“For some employers, this means reducing the number of hours in the traditional 40-hour working week. For others, it means compressing 40 hours a week into four days, rather than five.”

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/four-day-work-week-hays-survey-irish-workplaces

[IbogaProject]

24. The productivity gains of the last 80 year's

We need to slowly shorten the total hours per week. It will take time but it would be a better redistribution that just via tax which is easier to avoid and/or evade. More wages by more people would equal economic growth. Healthy growth not inflationary growth. The minimum wage hikes across the Blue, Democratic states have been a clear success.

[moniss]

25. American

working hours, time off etc. are so far behind where the Europeans are. The ethic here is to work yourself all hours of the day and night 7 days a week, give up family and much of your social development, set aside intellectual and creative expansion and do it all in the hopes that one day you'll be O.K. and have a bank account of a certain size. Far too many have never seen "Death of a Salesman". If they did they could ponder what Arthur Miller was asking about making our own prisons, the damage it can do to our lives and the lives of others and the awful feeling of helplessness when it all just goes on and on.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

27. I'm old. and I recall that in the 1950s and early 1960s there was this notion

that we'd soon all be working 20 hours a week. What happened?

[mopinko]

28. i just want to pipe up here that the big thing i get from twitter is news from across the pond.

it's still worthwhile for the voices that made it what it is. and i'm rly grateful for the connections that i've made 'back home'.

[Skittles]

31. I'm guessing they are not in 24 x 7 environments

I cannot see that working for the IT field I am in, for example....when I work 4 nights, it's 12 hour shifts.....