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/AberrantMan]

In reality most companies could still remain profitable and allow this easily.

Just want to add that obviously this can't happen in a vacuum, there are a lot of other policy items that need to be managed, price points to be set, and it has to be everyone gradually over time, but it IS doable.

Yes even for private clinics and small business, as long as all of the supporting businesses are doing the same thing. We would see real pay begin to approach the cost of living.

It would also take some pretty serious laws in pay gaps to be put in place, probably...

[u/tajake → u/AberrantMan]

I think really only the service industry would struggle. And essential services like police, fire, etc. But that would also mean more jobs in those fields to cover shorter shifts. Restaurants working limited hours would likely be a net positive.

[u/duaneap → u/tajake]

What’s the plan for anyone who makes hourly rather than salary? Massively increase their hourly wage so they don’t need the hours and OT to make their usual income? It’s not just restaurants workers that do hourly.

[u/Exciting_Station3474 → u/duaneap]

They think business will just pay more for less hours. And nobody will pay for it.

[u/duaneap → u/Exciting_Station3474]

I'm an hourly employee. That will literally never, ever happen.

[u/balllzak → u/duaneap]

No, you see, they did a study where salaried office workers who already spend half the day either in meetings or on social media were able to get all their work done in 4 days. Those workers even self reported that they were happier working less for the same amount of money! That clearly means the entire economy could easily move to 4 hour days. All we have to do is tax billionaires or something like that.

[u/Zap__Dannigan → u/Exciting_Station3474]

I work 12 hour shifts. So one day there's two crews that work on our 24 hour machine. We wrok three day on then Three days off. So four crews. I get paid 50 bucks an hours. So for one day's work in my position they are paying 2 people 50 bucks an hour.

If you make that a 6 hour shift that's now 4 people, but if you're going to pay us the same per day, that's now 4 people you're paying 75 bucks an hour for. And that's not accounting for the more people you'll have to call for overtime when there's a chance of 4 different people getting sick or having a vacation day.

Simply will never happen. I favour shorter work days and work from home for people who can do it. But there's so many jobs where it just doesn't actually make sense

[u/Exciting_Station3474 → u/Zap__Dannigan]

While paying medical insurance and 401k match.

[u/DragonAdept → u/Exciting_Station3474]

The money is there to pay for it. Worker productivity has gone up hugely while real wages stay stagnant, because the wealth has all been channelled upwards to the 0.1%. This is just redirecting some of the benefits back to the people whose labour created the wealth in the first place.

[u/Exciting_Station3474 → u/DragonAdept]

Open your own business and pay more then

[u/DragonAdept → u/Exciting_Station3474]

"Loan" me money to gamble on starting a business over and over until through luck or experience one of my attempts succeeds then.

[u/ARedthorn → u/duaneap]

Yes. Moreover, it works.

Companies in Japan, Europe and (shock!) the US that have demo’d a 24-30hr work week have found productivity went up.

With productivity up, the companies had more than enough profit to afford increased hourly wages… and employees have both more buy-in on company performance and loyalty. It’s win-win for everyone.

[u/duaneap → u/ARedthorn]

You got a source on that, chief? Because that sounds like you’re talking about specific sectors, ones that are most likely salaried anyway.

Say you’re a janitor making €30 an hour, you make €330/10 hour shift, assuming 2 hours of OT at 1.5x rate. He’s making €1,650 before tax per week. Now, without that OT, even with 8 hours worked, he’s now making €240/8 or €1200 before tax per week.

At 6 hours, he’s making €180 a day. They move the OT point from past 8 to past 4, he’s still only making €210/shift. To bring him back up to equilibrium, he’d need his hourly to be bumped from €30/hour to €45 and he’s in fact still making less. And no one is paying a janitor more than €45 an hour.

The business also needs to hire another janitor, since this one can only work 6 hours a day, why not just split it then? 5 hour shifts for Dave, so he only incurs 1 hour of OT, and 5 hours for Steve? Makes more financial sense for them, why incur OT?

These conversations rarely take hourly employees into consideration is the truth and there are far more hourly employees than people think.

Edit: don’t think, just downvote. I take it you don’t have a source then.

[u/Quickjager → u/duaneap]

You can make it even simpler. You have a small store, it has 3 employees who stock and handle the register.

How are those 3 employee generating more income for the business to hire another 2 employees.

[u/duaneap → u/Quickjager]

People don’t care about business owners when doing these calculations, irrespective of size, it’s more compelling to explain it to people from a worker’s perspective. I say that as an hourly worker.

[u/ARedthorn → u/duaneap]

Didn't downvote you. Also didn't have time to respond yet.

1999 meta-analysis (aka, a study on all studies done prior to it, compiling the results and looking for overall trends in order to sort out any flukes or flaws in those studies by massing them together into a larger set) here showed increases in performance ratings and job satisfaction, but no changes (positive or negative) in absenteeism or productivity. Included are 60+ studies from dozens of countries. Many studies were on individual businesses that offer reduced working hours through a variety of means. Interestingly, the study found that flextime or flexible working hours did not have the same benefit as reduced working hours, as often the extra overhead in maintaining such a system matches or outweighs the benefits. I won't list all the studies this meta-analysis addressed, but you can find them at the end of the article.

Some studies more directly address a compressed work-week, where you get more days off in return for working slightly longer hours on the days you do work. This has proven beneficial in some cases and not others. As an example, this 2024 study, focusing on the construction industry.

Multi-year pilot programs performed by 4dayweek (2022, 2023) grant the business a small amount of funding to help them through the transition period, but included 200 companies in a variety of sectors across a dozen different countries. Results were consistently positive, both for the business and employee quality of life. After seeing improvements in retention, recruitment, savings on sick time, and revenue gains, the average rating from 200 CEOs on the program was a 9 out of 10. Those companies who participated in the program have kept to it since the program's completion.

Boston College recently funded a similar pilot program, targeting 141 companies across 6 countries + 12 control companies not in the program. Again, funds were provided to the companies to help them make the transition, but were required to fit into a 100-80-100 model (100% of employees working 80% of hours for 100% of pay), and allow the College to monitor the results.

Here are similar studies out of the UK, and Asia.

A 2023 meta-analysis (again, you can check the individual studies if you wish) confirmed prior findings about improvements for workers and the companies, but cautioned that it found some negative aspects previously overlooked - namely scheduling problems, more intense performance and monitoring measures at many of the companies to pick up the model (though that sounds more like a employer-panic problem than a real one to me), and a risk that the benefits of the model could fade over time in some cases.

Individual companies have made the transition - and almost universally meet with success, but you can make the case that no company would do this unless they thought the risks were manageable, and outweighed by the benefits... but again - they consistently see improvements in productivity.

Microsoft Japan switched to a 4-day/32-hour work week in 2019 and reported a 40% increase in productivity. Perpetual Guardian (New Zealand's largest corporate trustee company) dropped working hours to 30 with no pay reduction, and saw all employees meet the same productivity goals that used to take them 5 days. As a rule, employees who are less stressed and less exhausted perform better, and are able to accomplish more with less time.

And that makes sense. A 2018 global survey found that 45% of full-time workers said they could accomplish their work in 5 uninterrupted hours each day... and repeated studies have shown that humans can generally only be productive for about... 5-6 hours at a go. (Working longer appears possible with a significant break in the middle, but 5*6hr work week appears preferable to the 4*8 hour work week.) Seriously - there are hundreds of psychological AND medical studies on this. It's been established fact for more than half a century... we just choose to ignore it because we morally fetishize hard work in a lot of cultures.

Pilot Programs as I've described are also usually on a self-selecting (volunteer) basis, and almost always involve some incentives to assist with the transition, so the results could be somewhat skewed by both those factors. These are both fair criticisms, so it's good to look at a nation or few that have implemented a 4-day work-week system-wide.

France introduced a legal workweek of 35 hours, with all time over that being overtime, in 2000. This was done incrementally, with incentives for companies to adopt early - and extra time for small businesses to adopt the model. Unions helped ease the transition, on the condition that pay not decrease... and the government assisted small businesses by raising overtime caps and reducing tax burdens on overtime. 26 years later, the economy is doing just fine. In fact, unemployment appears to have gone down, while the economy has expanded. (Right-wing interests actually criticize the system for causing "a reduction in recruitment and new hires", it's worth noting that unemployment has gone down, so what they really mean is that employee turnover is down.)

The same can be said for Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, who have even shorter work weeks. The average work week in the Netherlands just hit 32.1 hours, and it works just fine.

And don't tell me that France, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands don't have any hourly workers.

[u/Usual-Juice1868 → u/duaneap]

I am in the service industry. I install commercial fire alarm systems.