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We Need Another Day Off – Four Day Work Week
3 Comments | Posted by Philip Newman in Change, Greater Improvement
Well today’s Friday, the day everyone seems to look forward to in the week.
Working for the weekend, to our time away from vocation, and spend some time doing what we really want.
Now, there are two problems here.
The first being: that there should be some joy in the work you do. Accomplishing something, and especially contributing to society all have their benefits for the ego. Its likely that this has been forgotten in the day-to-day shuffling of the business world, but try to remember why you got into it in the first place.
The second: the weekend just isn’t long enough.
I know the second point goes against what I just said, but there’s a reason for it:
We all need time away from work, and with all the stresses that burden us, we deserve more.
How about a four day work week?
There has been a push for this in recent reporting. The CBC wrote this article detailing how the shortened week inevitably saves the company money, due to lowered energy costs of shutting down the plant on the extra day.
The state of Utah did a yearlong experiment with the four day work week. They have found amazing success, with saving costs for the company and gas for their employees, such as in the CBC article, but also found 82% of the workers preferred the new schedule.
While these two examples involve a longer work day, but shortened work week, the salaries stay the same [at 40 hours a week for standard full time, 4 days a week, 10 hour days].
This keeps you at work longer during the day, but you get the work week done much quicker, with a larger pay-off as well.
My belief is that this will lower stress, increase employee morale [which it has shown in examples], and will also spark the economy, with an extra day for people to go out and spend money on their free time.
Families could possibly improve, with a whole extra day for family time, and making it easy to plan trips without taking time off.
It’s shown to work, and its preferred by employees, while saving employers money, why hasn’t this been done sooner?
For more read this post at Bullion Bulls Canada.
Popularity: 100% [?]
3 Comments for We Need Another Day Off – Four Day Work Week
messel | November 30, 2009 at 11:22 pm
B6 | December 1, 2009 at 1:24 am
I’m all for the 3 12 hour work days as well, I pushed my manager at valvoline to convert everybody’s schedule to 3 12 hours days and a couple hours on another day to fill in the gaps. Everyone supported it after I showed them except for the manager saying it was too complicated. I responded with “yeah but right now 3 out of the 5 days I work already are completely different I only have 2 days that I come in and leave at the same time how is that uncomplicated?” He still would not budge 
There’s gathering momentum for a 4 day work week, 82% of employees prefer it over the standard 5 days a week. « Netcrema – creme de la social news via digg + delicious + stumpleupon + reddit | December 1, 2009 at 7:35 am
[...] There’s gathering momentum for a 4 day work week, 82% of employees prefer it over the standard…theinsidewindow.com [...]
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This is an interesting concept. I love the idea of a flexible schedule, and have worked part time (3 long days) at my current position for a good part of the year. I find the open schedule to allow me to do more interesting "work like" activities outside of work, but they are based on passion and interest.
This alignment of what we do for income, and our genuine passions is the key to untapping great value for our society. If you really love what you are doing, 40 hours doesn't feel like enough time each week to do it.
I totally respect the 4 day week, but I'd increase the bid. How about 3 12hour days?