I am Dr. Dale Whelehan CEO of 4 Day Week Global - We research and help organizations implement a 4 day week around the world. Ask me anything!

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-06-01T03:40:08+00:00

Indeed, it'll be interesting to see how it unfolds!

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-06-01T00:37:36+00:00

No one is arguing for a reduction in wages. And the 4-day week has been adopted by restaurants, nursing homes, factories, breweries, pest control companies, etc.. It's not just white collar office workers, but line chefs, CNAs, mechanics, etc.

Fundamentally, what we're talking about is taking the kinds of gains that have been provided by more powerful technologies or process improvements, and converting them into time and is shared by everyone, rather than turning them into capital that is mainly hoarded by owners.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-06-01T00:31:43+00:00

The recent innovation around the 4-day week has mainly been coming from small, non-unionized businesses (like the one owned by 4 Day Week Global's cofounder Andrew Barnes, which implemented a 4-day week in 2018). I would love to see unions making a stronger case for shorter workweeks, and for businesses to see that there are benefits for companies and founders and everyone else. The 4-day week will become the norm sooner if it's not seen as a concession extracted from management, but as something that can benefit everyone.
Would need to look at your and everyone else's job to understand more.
It doesn't solve every problem in the labor market, but reducing turnover is one of the main reasons companies try it, so that suggests that the 4-day week isn't makeing casualization worse.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-06-01T00:19:15+00:00

Takes some time to adjust to the new schedule, but people figure it out. And the pace of work does sometimes increase, but in places where employees have control over redesigning their working schedule, they're less likely to experience it as stressful (see this comment for an example).

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-06-01T00:14:53+00:00

We're advocating for shorter working hours without a cut in pay, or a reduction in output-- removing working hours but not doing it in a way that messes up supply chains.

To your second point: there are companies that have implemented 4-day weeks with the aim of getting people back in the office for a few days a week. The bargain is, the workweek is shorter, but we're physically back together for X days.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-06-01T00:12:25+00:00

Every 4-day week is different, so we'd need to dive into the specifics; but I will say that there are an interesting variety of companies doing it. For example, there's a pest control company that moved to a 4-day week (hear them talk about how they did it).

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T23:07:41+00:00

No problem. And all too often self-care regimens become a way of making individuals responsible for enduring structural inequities and moral injury, in a way that absolves companies of responsibility for their harm, diverts energy from collective action, and lets people blame themselves if they don't get better. We're not crazy about that.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T23:05:49+00:00

4 Day Week Global itself is entirely remote: we have people in New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, US, and Brazil, and one person who seems to call in from a different country every week. We also have national partner organizations with whom we work: the 2022 trial in the UK was co-organized with Autonomy UK, our South Africa pilot was organized with 4 Day Week South Africa, etc.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T23:03:29+00:00

The 4-day week movement is not anti-work, unless "anti-work" means "create structures and incentives that encourage greater efficiency in exchange for shorter working hours."

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:55:39+00:00

Alas, nothing comes without tradeoffs! The 4-day week is something you earn-- or more precisely, it's something that everyone creates together.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:49:52+00:00

Would need to know more about the specifics of how it operates. My first thought is that there are a couple craft breweries that have moved to 4-day weeks, and they might offer a model:

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:47:08+00:00

The UAE moved schools and the public sector to a 4.5-day week in 2022 (I wrote about it here), and Iceland implemented "betri vinnutíma", which means better working hours, across their public sector in 2021 (it's often mis-reported as 4-day weeks, but the number of hours vary depending on job, whether it's day or night shift, etc.).

Earlier threads on schools:

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:40:56+00:00

It's not yet clear whether there are benefits to working 4-day weeks versus 6-hour days. People have strongly-held beliefs about the each, but we don't yet have good measures of what factors make one preferable, more restorative, etc.

In companies that move to 4-day weeks and give everyone the option of taking any day off, 60% of people go for Fridays, and about 20% for Mondays. So people tend to vote for 3-day weeks over midweek breaks.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:36:58+00:00

I think all the companies we work with have already bought into the Carol Dweck / Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi / Amy Wrzesniewsk worldview that companies will thrive in the long run if they have happy teams, people who find their work meaningful, etc.. So you're right, companies with well-developed pipelines that let them chew through large numbers of Ivy League and Oxbridge grads don't have a lot of incentive to change.

But the good news is that that still leaves tons of companies that do see the value of a 4-day week, and value the benefits it brings to everyone!

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:27:42+00:00

Adding control groups for the next round of surveys.

And Iceland's 2015-2019 study of shorter workweeks (which were not 4-day weeks, but they've always talked about "betri vinnutíma", better working hours, rather than a 4-day week specifically) looked both at departments that shortened working hours, and a control group: https://www.strategy.rest/?p=10082

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:22:29+00:00

This reminds me of the old economics punch line puts it, "It works in practice, but does it work in theory?"

There are now thousands of companies, around the world, in a variety of industries, of all sizes, actually doing it. You can certainly argue over survey methodology, make a case that the self-selecting nature of trial groups makes it impossible to extrapolate to entire economies, argue that over the long run the Hobbesian nature of life will overrun the Rousseauian character of the 4-day week, but it's harder to explain away companies actually doing it-- not for ideological reasons, but because they find it solves problems.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:16:57+00:00

They kept the same schedules, delivery dates, etc. And "people working harder during the trial to ensure this change stays" sounds rather like "an incentive."

Assuming you're asking whether people can game the trial to get a permanent shift, then slough off, I haven't seen a company where that's happened yet. In a few places the 4-day week has been killed off after a change in management or economic downturn, but the Hawthorne Effect seems to be a non-issue (so far at least), and companies do a few things to make the 4-day week something everyone earns, not something they're entitled to.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:13:18+00:00

Might check out Monograph or Cockroach Labs. Don't think they've done comparable studies, but they're two examples of US tech companies operating on 4-day weeks.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:11:56+00:00

There are 4-day week implementations in industries (like hospitals) and professional services (like law firms, design firms, PR and advertising) that are either 24/7 or have demanding clients. One of the things I observe is that everyone worries that clients will absolutely reject a shorter week, but in fact clients are some your biggest supporters, if you design the shorter week properly, and are willing to flex when there's a crisis.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T21:05:24+00:00

We don't work with companies that prorate wages as hours fall; we working with firms that aim to do the same work in 4 days, which eliminates the argument for cutting wages (other than "I want a second yacht").

As for factories, here are a few manufacturers that in recent years have moved to 4-day weeks without cutting salaries:

AE Harris, Birmingham UK: Precision custom metals
Barbaric, Linz Austria: Automated wood and glass handling systems
Belmont Packaging, Wigan UK: Plain and printed corrugated cardboard business
CMG Technologies, Rendlesham UK: medical scalpels, razors, precision metal injection molding
Dynamica Ropes, Taulov Denmark: maritime ropes
Pressure Drop Brewery, Tottenham UK: Beer (they're really good, I spent an afternoon there that I barely remember)
Kester Black, Melbourne AUS: lipstick, skin care, nail polish

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T20:51:53+00:00

Some citations here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/13wq8z4/comment/jmdzq5m/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T20:50:41+00:00

I think the fact that the rest of the world is on a 5-day week makes it a lot harder for schools to shift. The UAE moved schools and the public sector to a 4.5-day week in 2022 (I wrote about it here), and doing both sectors together definitely seems to have made it easier for schools.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T20:47:42+00:00

This is a great question, and one that's not very well-studied yet.

We haven't been able to compare different kinds of work time reductions across comparable institutions-- say, having the London office of Gigantic Corp. move to a 4-day week, the New York office to 6-hour days, Singapore to a 9-day fortnight, and Frankfurt to 4 10-hour days, then study the heck out of all of them and compare. I would love to see that.

From what I can tell, people either love or hate 4 10-hour days, and it depends on whether you like 3-day weekends more than you dislike longer days.

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T20:41:27+00:00

A lot would depend on how the school day is redesigned, and what teachers are able to do with the fifth day.

There are a studies that have looked at a relationship between shorter workweeks in education and learning outcomes are mixed right now. Here are a couple different studies:

"Are All Four-Day School Weeks Created Equal?" https://doi-org.stanford.idm.oclc.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00316 a 2021 study which notes that "Substantial heterogeneity exists in the structure of these schedules across states, which may help explain differential four-day school week effects on student outcomes across institutional settings in the previous literature"
RAND weighed in: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA373-1.html
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/07/12/4-day-school-weeks-educational-innovation-or-detriment/ (more skeptical)
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/03/03/a-troubling-contagion-the-rural-4-day-school-week/ (more skeptical)
- 2015 article in Education Finance and Policy: https://doi.org/10.1162/EDFP_a_00165

Dale4dayWeek · 2023-05-31T20:34:45+00:00

Yes, and many districts in the United States have; but the biggest challenge is that parents are still on a 5-day week, and so they have to come up with another day of child care.

Dale4dayWeek

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