Millionaires Support Four-Day Workweek

[mercurial]

Wealth, we hear constantly, comes from hard work. But Google chief Larry Page — no slouch in the wealth department — says the workweek should be shorter. So do most millionaires who commented in a recent survey. In a discussion with tech investor Vinod Khosla, Page said "the idea that everyone needs to work frantically to meet people's needs is just not true." We spend too much time working for things we don't need, he said. One answer he suggested would be a "coordinated way to reduce the workweek.” Easy for a billionaire workaholic to say. But even everyday millionaires think our workweek should be shorter. A survey by Spectrem Group found that more than 69 percent of millionaires surveyed (those with investible assets of R10.7 million or more) said they believed the four-day workweek is a "valid idea." Women were even more supportive — 82 percent of female millionaires backed the idea. A shorter week, though, doesn’t mean fewer hours. Most millionaires support four 10-hour days, so the standard workweek would still be 40 hours.

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[Batista]

Millionaires will support a 1 day work week since they dont really do much work themselves....

 

[Deadmanza]

This country needs 5, 10 hour days.

 

[Ninja'd]

This country needs 5, 10 hour days.

And suddenly I'm reminded of Cosatu demanding that the Monday following Boxing Day should be a public holday. Boxing Day that year was on a Saturday btw.

 

[grok]

This country needs 5, 10 hour days.

It certainly does not. I do 5/12 on average but the country would benefit more from the hordes of unemployed to also work 5/8 than those who have work picking up the pace another notch.

 

[grok]

This country needs 5, 10 hour days.

It certainly does not. I do 5/12 on average but the country would benefit more from the hordes of unemployed to also work 5/8 than those who have work picking up the pace another notch.

 

[Drifter]

It certainly does not. I do 5/12 on average but the country would benefit more from the hordes of unemployed to also work 5/8 than those who have work picking up the pace another notch.

12 hour days? What do you do for a living?

 

[Messugga]

I'd kill for an extra day available during the week. Weekends are simply too short to get everything done that needs doing and hours spent commuting back and forth from work during the week is a massive waste of time and really chows into my evenings, leaving little time for myself.

 

[Deadmanza]

It certainly does not. I do 5/12 on average but the country would benefit more from the hordes of unemployed to also work 5/8 than those who have work picking up the pace another notch.

How would working 4/10 help the unemployed?

 

[mercurial]

What If Every Weekend Was Three Days Long? At These Companies It Is

With Memorial Day weekend starting in just a few hours, many Americans will be relishing in an extra day off to kick back and relax. The additional time off may have everyone wishing a three-day weekend was the norm. Well, for some companies, it is.

Treehouse, an online service that teaches web design, app design, and coding, has a year-round three-day weekend policy. CEO Ryan Carson began taking Fridays off soon after starting his first company to spend more time with his family and since the company’s inception has made it a policy that employees do the same.

He dismisses the idea that productivity is tied to the number of hours clocked at the end of the day, arguing a great deal of this time is misspent and unfocused. Instead of a 40-hour workweek, Treehouse’s 72 full-time employees work eight-hour days Monday thru Thursday.

While Carson himself was sceptical about the company’s ability to cram five days of week into four, he argues his company is now living proof that four-day workweeks are not only possible, but a critical component to success.

While Treehouse’s three-day weekends are year-round, other companies, such as Beholder, a creative content agency specializing in film and video production, web design, and development, three-day weekends are only offered during the summer months.

Beholder kicked off their three-day weekend summer schedule on May 23rd. Rather than four eight-hour days, however, Beholder adjusted their working hours from 9-5 to 8-6:30 Monday thru Thursday. Emilia Andrews, chief operating officer, says three-day weekends have not only boosted employee morale, but have improved productivity.

How can working less lead to getting more done?

EMPLOYEES RETURN TO WORK RECHARGED.
High employee morale and energy is perhaps the biggest benefit of three-day weekends. Carson argues giving employees an extra day off causes them to return to work fresh and excited to get down to business.

“For some, the weekend is almost too long. They can’t wait to get back to work,” he says. That enthusiasm translates into greater productivity, a greater sense of loyalty to the company, and a high-energy workplace.

IT'S A BENEFIT OTHER COMPANIES DON'T MATCH.
Despite Treehouse’s inability to match salaries of major tech companies, Carson says the company’s three-day weekend policy has helped the company recruit and retain top talent, many of whom have chosen to stay at Treehouse even after receiving offers from prestigious companies such as Facebook. “Where else are they going to get to work a four-day week?” he says.

WHEN PEOPLE SPEND LESS TIME AT WORK THEY ARE MORE EFFICIENT WHEN THEY ARE THERE.
Cramming five days of work into four simply forces employees to use their time wisely. Andrews has noticed great improvements in efficiency since implementing the three-day weekend policy. “Meetings are incredibly focused,” she says.

Less time is spent on water-cooler chat or discussions that should be left for happy hour and employees learn to prioritize tasks more effectively and to work together to ensure clients’ needs are still met. Beholder instituted an online project management system to improve communication with clients and the internal team assigned to the project and ensure deadlines are being met.

IT CREATES A SENSE OF URGENCY.
Thursday (the last day of the workweek for Treehouse and Beholder) comes fast, meaning employees have to prioritize their weekly tasks to make sure they can meet goals. Employees come into the office on Monday morning ready to get down to business and there’s certainly no slowing down in the afternoons like there might be in other companies where employees may feel they have more time to get tasks done and can push things off today’s agenda to do tomorrow.

“You get to Wednesday and go, ‘Oh my gosh, I only have one more day to get the work done for this week.’ There’s a kind of urgency that always seems to be in place,” says Carson. This urgency forces the team to be more efficient when working to ensure clients’ needs are still met at the end of the week.

IT IMPROVES TEAMWORK.
Since everyone loves their three-day weekends, all employees have a stake in ensuring work gets completed so they can continue to enjoy their extra day off. “It’s an overall team effort to make sure everyone is on top of their tasks and assignments so they can [all] enjoy the three-day weekend,” says Andrews.

“The mindset went from ‘I’ll wait for X-person to give it to me’ to ‘Let me go and get the answer rather than wait for it to come to me.’”

 

[mercurial]

It's High Time For The 4-Day Workweek

With Labor Day around the corner, I have a suggestion for America’s employers that I think would make their employees happier and more productive: Offer them a four-day workweek.

Giving staffers one weekday off would be especially appealing to the biggest chunk of the American labor force – boomers.

Many of them could use the free day to take their parents to doctor’s appointments or handle other eldercare duties, spend time with their grandkids, learn new skills and transition into retirement. Four-day workweeks can also let them cut their commutes. (In my blog post next week, I’ll offer advice on how boomers can negotiate or find four-day workweek jobs.)

4-Day Weeks’ Pay and Benefits

If you put in 40 hours during your four days, you generally get full pay and benefits. You might even keep your benefits by working 30 to 40 hours, though you’ll likely take a proportional pay cut.

No matter how you structure a four-day workweek, though, your job needs to get done – either by you or by you and someone working the fifth day.

Compressed workweeks – the delightful term human resources people use for putting in 40 hours in fewer than five days – are “a great way to provide employees the flexibility to meet the demands of work and life outside of work,” says Lisa Horn, co-leader of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Workplace Flexibility Initiative and partnership with theFamilies and Work Institute.

“A four-day workweek allows you to continue to contribute on the job while gaining the time to pursue a long-neglected avocation, to help care for the grandchildren or to simply enjoy the other parts of life,” says Cali Williams Yost, chief executive and founder of Flex+Strategy Group in Madison, N.J.

Brooke Dixon, co-founder and chief executive of Hourly.com, a site that matches job-seekers with employers, says “well above half our users are looking for something other than a traditional workweek.”

Jay Love, the former chief executive of Indianapolis search engine optimization consultant Slingshot SEO, which has a four-day workweek told Inc. that this employee perk “is an amazing draw in the age of recruiting the best talent to your team” and leads to soaring retention rates.

What Makes 4-Day Workweeks Rare?

So why are employers with four-day workweeks so hard to find in America, especially when there seems to be such a demand for this benefit? (Never mind that the average workweek is far shorter than 40 hours in many parts of the world: 29 hours in the Netherlands and 33 hours in Norway and Denmark, for example. And don’t get me started on best-selling author Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Workweek notion.)

Today, harried five-day-a-week workers must routinely, and sometimes furtively, scoot out for doctor’s appointments, errands and elder care duties for their parents – and they’re doing so more often. Employers often don’t like it when staffers head out for these reasons.

According to the Captivate Network’s recent Homing From Work survey of 4,000 white collar workers, 45% leave work for doctor and dentist appointments and 52% go out to buy gifts, greeting cards and flowers. There’s been a 31% increase in running errands since 2011, the study says.

Yet just 36% of employers permit at least some employees to have four-day workweeks, says Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute. Only 7% allow all or most staffers to do their jobs this way.

“I don’t believe the majority of workplaces are supportive of four-day workweeks,” says Jessica DeGroot, founder of the Third Path Institute, a Philadelphia-based group that aims to help employees lead “integrated” lives.

She cites two reasons:

1. Strong organizational norms on who gets ahead at work. DeGroot says managers tend to promote staffers who “put work first,” which typically means showing up every weekday.

2. Four-day workweeks add complexity to managers’ jobs. “It’s much easier to say to everyone, ‘Come in at the same time every day and work long hours,’” she says.

“Often, it isn’t that employers don’t want to offer four-day workweeks, it’s that they’re not sure what’s in it for them,” Horn says.

Of course, some types of jobs or workplaces don’t easily lend themselves to four-day workweeks. And some employers must pay hourly staffers overtime if they put in more than eight hours a day to get the fifth day off.

Where the Perk Exists

That said, progressive employers in a variety of fields let all or a portion of their staffers work four days a week. (Technology and accounting firms seem to be leading the way.)

Everyone gets a four-day week year-round at tech educator Treehouse Island, in Orlando, Fla., and at Slingshot SEO. Chicago software company 37signals has 32-hour, four-day shifts from May through October.

When Work Works, a book published by the Families and Work Institute and SHRM, describes dozens of employers offering four-day workweeks and other types of flexible schedules.

Some enterprising employees, including ones at senior levels, manage to pull off their own four-day schedules.

Ivan Axelrod, chief operating officer for Provident Financial Management in Santa Monica, Calif., four years ago began taking Mondays off to provide child care for his granddaughter Madelyn, allowing her mom to work those days.

“Finding ways to interact with children and grandchildren just has a reward you can’t get out of work,” Axelrod told ThirdPath. He now provides caregiving for a grandson each week, too.

Different Ways They’re Offered

Four-day workweeks can be done in many ways, with varying hours. For example, the 5-4/9 arrangement lets staffers alternate between weeks of five nine-hour days and ones with four nine-hour days, so you get a day off every other week.

Pat Katepoo, the Kaneohe, Hawaii-based head of Work Options, a firm that helps employees negotiate flexible work arrangements, thinks boomers might especially like working a somewhat kinder version of that: eight-hour days with every other Friday off, even if doing so means taking a small pay cut.

“That’s a good, creative option for this age group,” Katepoo says.“They can enjoy longer weekends 26 times a year and with Monday federal holidays, get some four-day weekends. That would let them shoot up to Cape Cod or drive three states over to see their grandkids.”

The Trouble With One Method

But I’m not keen on what’s known as the 4/10 model, especially for boomers, even though it’s the most widely used compressed workweek schedule.

This one requires employees to punch 10-hour days on each of their four workdays. But you can wind up so pooped after continually clocking in for 10 hours that you’ll lack the stamina to make your fifth day enjoyable and productive.

“I’m 52 and I don’t have the energy I had when I was 22,” DeGroot says. “With a 4/10 schedule, I’d need the other day to recover and that defeats the whole purpose of a four-day workweek.”

 

[w1z4rd]

This country needs 5, 10 hour days.

No thanks!

 

[mercurial]

This Company Has A 4-Day Work Week, Pays Its Workers A Full Salary And Is Super Successful

The 70 people who work at Treehouse, an online education company that teaches people about technology, only work four days a week at the same full salary as other tech workers. Yet the company’s revenue has grown 120 percent, it generates more than R107.05 million a year in sales, and it responds to more than 70,000 customers, according to a post in Quartz by CEO Ryan Carson.

Carson has been working four-day weeks since 2006, when he founded his first company with his wife, he told ThinkProgress. He quit his job to start it, only to find that they both put in seven days a week. “I remember distinctly my wife and I were on the couch one evening,” he recalled, “and she said something like, ‘What are we doing? I thought that starting a company means you have more time and more control, but it seems like we have less time and less control and we’re more stressed out.’” They decided to cut back by not working Fridays, and after they hired their first employee, “we decided to officially enact [a four-day week] and we never looked back.”

Carson has since started three other companies at which he’s instituted this rule, Treehouse being the latest. While it’s hard to quantify, he believes his company benefits from better output and morale. “The quality of the work, I believe, is higher,” he said. “Thirty-two hours of higher quality work is better than 40 hours of lower quality work.” The impact on his employees’ outlook is also “massive,” he said. “I find I just can’t wait to get back to work” after the weekend, and he suspects the same is true for others. On Mondays, “everyone’s invigorated and excited.” He recounted a time when a developer told him that his hope was to work at the company for 20 years. In the Quartz article, he noted that a team member gets recruitment emails from Facebook, but that his response is always, “Do you work a four-day week yet?”

And recruiting people in the first place is also easier thanks to the shorter week. “We regularly have new employees choose Treehouse over Facebook, Twitter and other top-tier tech companies,” he writes. And the company is able to still pull in high sales and even R139.16 million in venture capital thanks to instituting higher efficiency, by, for example, strictly limiting the use of email.

Carson believes plenty of other companies could follow his example. “We have 70,000 customers, and I think if we can do it… couldn’t more people do that?” he said. Some businesses will still need to be open on Fridays, but he suggests “rolling employment,” where some people work Monday through Thursday while others work Tuesday through Friday. “Is it possible for everybody? No,” he concedes. “But I bet some huge percentage of companies can do it that just aren’t.”

There are some drawbacks. Not working on Friday, he said, means no day of slowdown before the weekend. “It’s kind of like 100 miles per hour until Thursday at 6 p.m.” And he acknowledges that less work may get done with one day off.

But there is some social science to back up the practice of limiting how much people put in at work each week. Research has found that putting in long hours, or more than 60 hours a week, produces a small productivity boost at first. But after three or four weeks of working at that level, it will actually decline. Other studies have similarly found that long hours produce a short term bump but have negative ramifications over the long run. This plays out on the global stage: countries where workers put in less time tend to be the most productive. For example, Greek workers put in 2,000 hours a year, on average, while German workers put in about 1,400, yet German productivity is about 70 percent higher.

The dominant work culture in the United States is one of overwork, though. We rank at number 11 out of 33 developed countries in how many hours we work each week. For professionals, nearly everyone is working more than 50 hours a week and nearly half are putting in more than 65.

Carson isn’t the only one experimenting with shorter hours. Municipal workers in Sweden’s second-largest city will soon work six-hour days to see whether it boosts efficiency and reduces costs if they need fewer sick days. Six of the ten most competitive countries, including Germany, have banned working more than 48 hours a week.

 

[mercurial]

Prominent Doctor: 4-Day Work Week Would Relieve Stress, Unemployment

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Would a four day work week take a load off your shoulders?

A prominent doctor in the United Kingdom says for the majority of workers, the answer is yes, and he’s advocating for change.
In an interview with The Guardian, Professor John Ashton, the President of the U.K. Faculty of Public Health, says cutting the traditional five-day week down by a day would not only relieve stress and reduce unemployment, it would also help address certain medical conditions, such as high blood pressure and “mental ill-health associated with overwork.”
Ashton is calling for a switch to a four-day work week in Britain, citing the “maldistribution of work” as a reason.

“We’ve got a maldistribution of work. The lunch-hour has gone; people just have a sandwich at their desk and carry on working,” Ashton explained in the interview. “We need a four-day week so that people can enjoy their lives, have more time with their families, and maybe reduce high blood pressure because people might start exercising on that extra day.”
Ashton’s comments reportedly came the day after Britain extended the right to request flexible work hours to all employees, rather than just “carers and people looking after children.”
While the Guardian article mentions that British people work some of the longest hours in Europe, a 2013 CNN Money roundup ranked the United States the seventh-most hardworking country in the world on a list of 10.
Britain was not on that list.

 

[grok]

12 hour days? What do you do for a living?

Oracle apps developer, working full day at a client plus developing a product for my company after hours. Been clocking it like this for the last year and a half..

 

[Deadmanza]

No thanks!

Lazy bastid!

I didn't specifically mean everyone needs to work more.

 

[grok]

How would working 4/10 help the unemployed?

Opposite of what I said, i.e. I believe it'll be more beneficial for the county to have the unemployed work 8 hours, 5 days a week than the already employed working additional hours.

 

[mercurial]

To grow your company and make millions, start working four days a week

Is it possible for an entire company to work a four-day week, grow revenue by 120% per year and do millions of dollars in yearly sales? Yes. At Treehouse, the online school I founded in 2010, we figured out how.

We work a 4-day week, and in just 32 hours per week, here’s what we’ve been fortunate to achieve:

• Over R107,049,915.46 in yearly sales
• 70 full-time employees
• Yearly revenue growth of over 120%
• R139,164,890.1 raised in venture capital
• Over 70,000 paying students

What’s the trick?

We have over 70,000 students at Treehouse and only 70 employees—and we only work 32 hours a week. I have been working 4 days a week since 2006 because I wanted time to dedicate to the people I love, and when people join the company they often wonder if we’re for real. Sometimes, they expect they’ll have to work 40 hours anyway—but they end up positively surprised. How are we able to achieve a customer-to-employee ratio of 1,000-to-1? By increasing efficiency.

Here’s how we do it.

1. No internal email

We’ve banned using email internally. Because email is push instead of pull. Instead of going out and pulling the information I need, when I need it, email allows others to push information on me, by copying on emails I don’t need to read, when it’s convenient for them. Therefore I spend the majority of my time trying to clear my inbox, doing things that are important for other people, instead of advancing my priorities.

Instead of the push email model, we use two simple tools: Convoy and Flow.

Convoy is a simple forum, just like Reddit, except it’s only visible to Treehouse employees. You can post ideas, celebrate wins, discuss competitors, say happy birthday, post funny videos—anything really. If someone has time to consume these things, they just go to Convoy. All this ‘noise’ (even if it’s healthy noise) doesn’t clutter up your inbox.

You go pull the information when and if you want it. We have @person tagging in Convoy so that you can mention people to get their attention. However, this doesn’t email the person – it simply puts a notification at the top of Convoy so the next time they log in, they’ll see where they’ve been mentioned.

I get probably 10 to 20 emails a day and they’re almost all from external people. It’s amazing.

We manage our projects with a simple tool we’ve built called Flow. Here’s how it works:

You propose a project that you’re passionate about, including a title, description and measure of success.
You add “roles” to the project that are needed for completion. For example, if you wanted to add a new page to the site, you’d add a designer and a developer.
You hit “Propose Project.”
Once a day, everyone in the company is emailed a summary of the all the proposed projects in Flow (one of the few things we use email for).
If you think you’ll be able to fill one of the available roles in the Project, you go to the project in Flow and click “join.”
Once the all the roles for the project get filled, someone clicks “start,” picks a due date and work begins.
At the end of each day, every person on a project enters a simple “status” for what they did that day on the project and chooses a % complete for their role in the project.
If you need to discuss something with other people on the project, you go to the discussion tab and start a new discussion (much like a forum) or jump in HipChat and chat about it.
This leads to the second vital secret to the four-day week.

2. Asynchronous communication

95% of all communication at Treehouse is written. We avoid facetime meetings and phone calls whenever possible. Keeping communication in written form means that people can respond when it’s convenient for them.
As you know, it completely wrecks your productivity when someone comes over to your desk and taps you on the shoulder, or pulls you into a meeting. You have to stop what you’re doing and participate in a discussion, whether you really need to or not.

However, if I ping you on HipChat, you can respond when it’s best for you. We remove the “I need to know ASAP!” communication that is often so rampant in companies today.

Yes, we occasionally use Google Hangouts to have a face-to-face meeting, but we avoid them if possible and always make attendance optional.

3. The big picture

There’s just one more small piece to this puzzle: We don’t have managers at Treehouse.

The overarching theme here is this: We treat our employees like the responsible adults they are. We let people set their own priorities and communicate when it’s most convenient for them.

The amazing benefits

There are plenty of reasons to work a four-day week.

Recruiting is easy (we still pay full salaries and offer a very generous benefits package). We regularly have new employees choose Treehouse over Facebook, Twitter and other top-tier tech companies.
Retention is easier. One of the team told me he regularly gets emails from Facebook trying to win him over and his answer is always the same: “Do you work a four-day week yet?”
Morale is boosted. On Mondays everyone is fresh and excited—not jaded from working over the weekend.
50% more time with our family and friends. I get to spend three days a week, instead of two, with my family. 50%. It’s insane. For those on the team without kids, they get to spend this extra 50% on their hobbies or loved ones.

I hope our experience encourages you to consider working a four-day week. It sounds insane, until you try it

 

[w1z4rd]

Lazy bastid!

I didn't specifically mean everyone needs to work more.

I run two companies, am involved in politics and on the executive for a charity group. Dont you be cutting into my dota time ... that time is like precious gold to me

 

[mercurial]

This will unfortunately never happen in a third world country, as much as I would love this.