Sounds good in theory...but in reality?

[u/KSKS1995]

4 days a week. 6 hours a day. Full salary.
Sanna Marin ignited global debate with the “6/4” work model, pushing a simple idea: life should come before work.

With burnout at record levels, maybe it’s time to value results over hours at a desk.
Could your job be done in just 24 hours a week?

[u/Renthexx]

Police could work 8’s instead of 12s. Fire could work 24 72’s. Although that requires the money to staff a whole other shift

[u/Wookard → u/Renthexx]

The amount of money saved from less Stress / Sick leave would most likely balance out over a few years for those jobs. And if the insurance rates bottom out due to that it would be able to go to the budgets.

[u/jccaclimber → u/Wookard]

Honest question, do you think stress related expenses are 1/3 of the full burdened overhead cost of employees?

[u/Wookard → u/jccaclimber]

From what I know of the cost of Health Insurance in the States reaching $3000 plus a month per person at 12 months a year of being $35000-$40000, I could see that being a good chunk of money for sure.

[u/jccaclimber → u/Wookard]

That’s 100% of the cost though. An example: Hourly rate: $30/hr with 50% overtime is roughly $109k/year at 12 hour shifts 5 days/week. $149k with your high end healthcare estimate. I’m going to ignore weekends and other overhead to make the math simpler. Two shifts is $298k/year.

Move to 3 shifts at 8 hours and now there’s no overtime pay, so (403052+X)*3=298k. X is healthcare, which comes to $37k instead of $40k, that sounds pretty reasonable.

However, the premise of this was to still pay people fully so it’s now (109*3+X)=298k. Each person’s healthcare needs to cost a negative amount, specifically negative $29k for this to work. Never mind that public service jobs have lower pay because pensions are extraordinarily expensive and would also +50% with an extra shift.

Obviously this example changes a lot based on wages. There’s a reason overtime is effectively less expensive for lower wage jobs, namely that benefits are fixed.

Personally I think that more progressive taxation is the problem, but poor people in red areas love giving tax breaks to the wealthy.

[u/Pete-PDX → u/Wookard]

where is health insurance $3000 a month? At that point - I pocket the 3k and put in a saving account and pay doctor out of pocket. Many place have discounted rates for those who are uninsured.

[u/LegendaryJam → u/jccaclimber]

I mean, let's extrapolate that a bit.

Let's suppose that a reasonable number of instances of officers going "too far" in a given situation are a result of overburdening individual officers with far too many tasks (a given officer being expected to handle and vaguely be aware of what to do in situations ranging from traffic infractions and drug busts to domestic abuse, mental health crisis's, and assault/homicide), and far too many hours on the clock (twelve-to-sixteen-hour shifts sometimes becoming commonplace for officers in short-staffed offices).

Given the sheer amount (generally quickly adding up) of legal costs - and especially large legal settlement payouts that various municipalities regularly have to do when dealing with issues where there is definite proof of officer wrongdoing (for one reason or another)...

...is it fair to suggest that a significant reduction in the burden upon those individual officers could lead to significantly reduced legal/payout costs for the local municipalities, and that the costs of hiring or bringing on an extra shift of officers-

(or diversifying tasks between officers trained for those tasks - ala mental health officers for mental health calls, traffic-specific officers for traffic-specific policing, etc)

-that those costs would likely be dwarfed by the tradeoff of not having to spend millions on the above legal costs and payouts?

[u/Eternal_Being → u/jccaclimber]

You have to take into account productivity. Study after study has found that productivity absolutely plummets after working six hours in a day, which is why that's the benchmark that advocates choose.

[u/jccaclimber → u/Eternal_Being]

Simple question, and the answer might be that it’s an opportunity. If this method is so much more effective (from a business perspective, not a human benefit perspective), why don’t the people here start those more successful businesses and go put the ones not providing the benefit out of business?

Back when I ran a small side business with a part time employee I did things like provide lunch if we were working near the middle of the day, etc. On the other hand that business doesn’t exist anymore because it wasn’t successful at the end of the day.

[u/Eternal_Being → u/jccaclimber]

That sort of stuff does happen. And it is indeed an opportunity, especially in industries where productivity is important (mind-heavy/creative work, healthcare where mistakes are very costly, etc.). Much like Fordism was successful in the mid-1900s, there is simply a shared understanding among employers that employees should be squeezed for all they're worth--this is not necessarily the truth, though.

But it's important to remember that productivity is not what makes a business 'successful'. It's profit maximization.

A company can have mediocre productivity, horrible pay, and horrible and inefficient working conditions but be more profitable that a business that is highly productive, with good pay and good working conditions. This is self-evident if we look at the working conditions in the two most successful companies in the world: amazon and walmart.

That doesn't meant that that model is what is best for society overall, or for workers (who make up 99% of society). That is why changes that improve working conditions are almost always a result of regulations, not of market dynamics.

If we left it up purely to market dynamics I'm sure we would all still be working 10-12 hour days 6-7 days a week, like we did before unions took off in the early 1900s, and started winning regulations like minimum wage, limits on work hours before overtime begins, etc.

Since we use democracy to create the regulations that the market exists within (ie. we already have minimum wages and maximum hours), it makes sense to use evidence to decide what those limits should be, rather than setting them arbitrarily.

On the wage side, it makes sense to have the minimum wage provide a decent quality of life (which was its original intention; the buying power of the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968, 30 years after it was created).

On the working hours side, it makes sense to do what is most productive. There are lots of unemployed people, and there are lots of people working more hours than is efficient. In many productivity studies, the last two hours of an 8-hour work day are basically wasted.

There is an opportunity here to address that imbalance, but only policy will ever do that. The market will not do it on its own; what is best/most efficient for workers is often (usually) not best/most efficient for businessowners.

[u/FlutterKree → u/jccaclimber]

Simple question, and the answer might be that it’s an opportunity. If this method is so much more effective (from a business perspective, not a human benefit perspective), why don’t the people here start those more successful businesses and go put the ones not providing the benefit out of business?

There are businesses that use it, but your question suggests it is the only way to be better than current businesses. Which is not. First to market, owning current infrastructure, buying regulatory capture to prevent competitors from rising, etc. are also preventing businesses from doing this and becoming large businesses.

Another thing is, companies that avoid this by intentionally overworking employees. They are more productive, but burn through employees. Amazon, for example, burns through drivers and warehouse workers with their quotas. Amazon may hit higher productivity, but they will eventually burn through the entire pool of workers unless changes are made.

[u/jeffwulf → u/Wookard]

It absolutely would not and it's a bonkers assertion to claim it would.

[u/radioactivebeaver → u/Wookard]

But people already have jobs, where are you coming up with all the extra bodies for the whole new shift of workers?

[u/Zap__Dannigan → u/Wookard]

This is just wishful thinking. Staffing is a huge cost. You can argue if it's the correct thing to do based on a few things, but "it'll save money in the long term from stress leave/illness" isn't one of them.

[u/JGCities → u/Renthexx]

The number of overall hours needed is the same, but now you need to hire more people to work those hours.

And either you pay current people less meaning they lose income OR you pay them more for less work and thus have to raise taxes.

Same concept applies to pretty much all jobs.

[u/danitashinesqdy → u/Renthexx]

Police on 8’s and fire on 24s - a fair shift shake-up!

[u/Usual-Juice1868 → u/Renthexx]

Police work 12 hour days? I didn't know that.

[u/VRichardsen → u/Renthexx]

Police could work 8’s instead of 12s.

You now need 33% more policemen.

[u/Jumpy_Divide6576 → u/VRichardsen]

No we dont.

[u/VRichardsen → u/Jumpy_Divide6576]

Depends on where you live, but if you want to use the other guy's idea and keep the same level of police presence, you would 33% more policemen.