[m8002?]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Tokyo government launches 4-day work-week to aid families amid low fertility

Originally Posted by am1m

Not sure if being allowed to leave 2 hours early is going to be enough for couples to change their mind about having kids!
Or open the borders to immigration, like any sensible nation would. But being Japan, I guess no chance of that happening. Am guessing government 'mandates to have kids' is coming next!

Very well said. There is no way they are going to allow other nationals to settle in Japan with citizenship. The only way is to give dollops of economic incentives for young Japanese to have kids.

I doubt if even that will help them achieve the 2.1 replacement levels. As that will need the young women to have 2-3 kids which most independent women would not choose these days.

[subraiyr]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

The Right to Disconnect


No easy answers here. I believe for a nation and economy like India that is developing, trying to get its productivity up, trying to get unemployment down imitating Western countries that are in cruise mode is not a wise path to go down. Nations, institutions, employment creating companies and GDP cannot be grown without stretching yourselves. I suspect that as Team BHP is dominated by young IT employees these views will not find favour. But all those here who have created jobs for others may resonate with my observations.

Having worked in corporate environment in the last 30 years, I think I can contribute to a certain extent to this conversation. I spent about 13 years in ITES when the industry started off in India - mid to late 90s and then another 12 years in Management consulting. Before that I worked in manufacturing as an entrepreneur.

With 24/7 availability of internet, accessibility over hand held devices and follow the sun approach by multi nationals, one can never be truly disconnected unless backed by employer, client and stakeholders. Even in the IT industry, while the core functional people can still manage to follow the 4 day work week rule, the support staff cannot. Especially in the administration services as they are part of a larger vertical system of suppliers and customers. The suppliers of logistics, transport, supplies etc work 6 days a week and this will in effect ensure that others have to follow the same.

Today, I run a small business employing about 50 individuals in a cut throat industry. My clients are domestic and they work 6 days a week. If I were to make a decent margin, I will have to do the same. There is no 4 day work week. There is no way that my employees cannot be in unreachable state. I make it a point to keep them off work from 6pm to 9am on weekdays and we work 1st and 3rd Saturdays. On Sundays I don't expect anyone to work, but if there is a critical need then the designated employee has to be available. Everyday I don't work is an opportunity loss to make money. After all that is our end goal right ? The only thing to keep in mind is my greed is for 1mn while another business man's greed is for 100mn

We need to see the whole concept of 4 day work week through a different lens. We have to look at it from the perspective that not everybody is an IT employee.

The active working population of India is approximately 600mn
Agriculture sector employs about 280 mn
Industries (manufacturing, construction, utilities, mining) employs 150mn
Services (trade, transport, professional services etc) employs 180mn
IT/BPM industry constitutes 5.4 mn people

I shudder to think what will happen if the majority of our workforce ends up working 4 days a week. Imagine that the paddy is ready to be harvested and the farmers decide that they cannot work on day 5 since its only a 4 day work week !!!

We really need to broaden our scope of conversation and not limit it to the IT industry. They are a small workforce and they can continue to work the way their clients/HR/Welfare team recommends.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by subraiyr

I shudder to think what will happen if the majority of our workforce ends up working 4 days a week. Imagine that the paddy is ready to be harvested and the farmers decide that they cannot work on day 5 since its only a 4 day work week !!!

i dont think 4 day week means everything is shut off for 3 days. People will usually take turns to work on those days. Just that each individual will work only for 4 days.
We already see that in many 24hour jobs like hospitals, factories, railways, EBs, etc. Its not like there is one nursing staff working 24hoursX7days in the ICU. There will be rotating shifts.

Now will this add a cost to the companies? Yes. But companies should already be paying double wages (as OverTime ) for every hour on top of 40hours.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by subraiyr

We need to see the whole concept of 4 day work week through a different lens. We have to look at it from the perspective that not everybody is an IT employee.

I shudder to think what will happen if the majority of our workforce ends up working 4 days a week. Imagine that the paddy is ready to be harvested and the farmers decide that they cannot work on day 5 since its only a 4 day work week !!!

We really need to broaden our scope of conversation and not limit it to the IT industry. They are a small workforce and they can continue to work the way their clients/HR/Welfare team recommends.

Well said @subraiyr. I too worked a 6-day week most of my life and am none the worse for wear and tear. Not a popular thing to say on Team BHP over weighted as it is with members from the IT industry whose perspective on a matter is then seen as the truth. And if it is a matter on soft issues such as work-life balance, working hours, Work from home, bosses, employers the discussion degenerates to a whine and a rant.

Most articles on the net on a 4-day week talk of increase in productivity, happiness, satisfaction without providing details of the data or seeking the perspective of the employer! Can't have employment without an employer!

The macro environment of the customer has moved to a 24x7x365. That customer expectation, and all on this thread are amongst those customer, cannot be met unless some hapless organization is delivering 24x7x365.

On another tangent Tokyo's Govt is moving to a 4-day week to encourage Japan's dangerously weak and falling birthrate. I doubt this will solve their birthrate challenge but it will be interesting to watch.
https://www.popsci.com/health/japan-four-day-work-week/

And then we have the Swiss Air Force who infamously only worked 5 days a week 10AM to 6PM. And when a hijacked airliner enered Swiss airspace they had to call on the French air Force to escort the hijacked airliner!

[Jeroen]

An interesting study recently concluded in the UK in the four day working week

Improving employee wellbeing

Just under 3,000 workers took part in the pilot, and 90% wanted to continue with the four-day working week at the end of the trial. The results also showed:

more than two thirds reported lower levels of ‘burnout’
39% said they were less stressed
40% reported fewer sleep difficulties
Many said they found it easier to balance work with both family and social commitments. 60% of employees found an increased ability to combine paid work with care responsibilities, and 62% reported it easier to combine work with social life.

Benefiting organisations

The research found reduced hours brought benefits to organisations as well as their staff. There was a 65% reduction in sick days and a 57% fall in the number of staff leaving the organisations.

Company revenues barely changed during the trial period. They even increased marginally by 1.4% on average for the 23 organisations that were able to provide data.

Of the 61 companies involved, 56 were still operating a four-day week a year after the pilot.

Organisations reported that their trial prompted further pilots among clients and partners, and this ripple effect is also moving into the public sector, says Professor Burchell:

We are actively engaged in a large trial with South Cambridgeshire District Council which includes all their staff, from office workers to refuse collection. The data clearly shows that they are better able to meet their key performance indicators, fill vacancies and save hundreds of thousands of pounds on agency staff.

Source

https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/how-...20productivity.

Jeroen

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

An interesting study recently concluded in the UK in the four day working week....

Jeroen, Thank you for sharing this.


All,

To draw any meaningful conclusion one will need the raw data on where these participating organizations were in the value chain of the product they sell, size, one location vs multiple locations, demands of the customer, nature of product - batch or continuous, how deeply linked are they to the supply chain before and after and so many more points. Most importantly what did the paying customer who pays the bills have to say. Too many of these studies focus only or largely on the employee. Almost all employees will state they like lesser work hours for the same pay.

Also a 4-day week automatically assumes a fairly high position on the Maslow's need hierarchy chart. A daily wager would desire to work a 6-day week because of his/her more unfortunate situation.

If your entire value chain before and after you {you here being the organization} is on a 7-day service {like an airline}, having a 5-day week means having 1.4X the number of employees to cover the 7 days. At a 4-day week it means needing 1.75X the number of employees. Many industries - aviation where I came from or hospitals where I currently am the 7th day is not a lighter day. So may be that industries like IT could practically have a 4-day week but I don't see how that works economically for many other industries.

The discussion has no conclusion really. Not yet at least. All of us in favour of a 4-day week let us start our charity at home. Please let's give our domestic staff a 4-day week first to better understand the perspective of the employer and then seek it for ourselves from our employer.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

An interesting study recently concluded in the UK in the four day working week

Thank you for sharing this. The detailed report has more interesting findings than what has been quoted in the Guardian article.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

To draw any meaningful conclusion one will need the raw data on where these participating organizations ...

The detailed report - link
Raw data (summarised version) - link.

The pilot has a wide spread of type of industry with marketing / advertising holding the maximum share of 50+ firms involved in this pilot; most of them being small-sized firms. A good read - I would say.

The discussion has no conclusion really. Not yet at least.

I think there's some application for sure. Maybe not applicable to entire MNCs but small firms or specific teams in large firms can take a lot from this. For example, if the firm/team is of individual contributors who can be relied to do their jobs in the manner they are better aligned to; think there's some leeway. Not everyone has to align to the 5/6/7 day existing working schedule.

[subraiyr]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

J
The discussion has no conclusion really. Not yet at least. All of us in favour of a 4-day week let us start our charity at home. Please let's give our domestic staff a 4-day week first to better understand the perspective of the employer and then seek it for ourselves from our employer.

Are we all discussing this in the Indian context or a much broader context ? This is probably the first question that we need to answer

This whole conversation of 4 day work week is now starting to permeate into education system as well. Not just teachers, but even students for that matter. My son's school's WhatsApp group is a place for becoming insane. We have parents who have started questioning schools' decision to have Saturday as a working day for kids - even though it is 2 Saturdays a month. And that too half days. Now some of us learned folks will say that this is governed by the need to clock X number of days of education as defined by the boards. But reality is that as competition increases, there is a need for longer studying hours.

In this case, if I were to accept that teachers will do only 4 day work week, imagine the plight of a student learning math. Teacher 1 will come for 4 days and will have a certain way of teaching math, and for the next 2 days Teacher 2 will come and teach in a slightly different way. 2 ways to solve a problem and this multiplied by 10 subjects. Boy, are we heading for disaster at the scholastic levels. This is just 1 case. Every field will have similar stories. While we would like all work to be process driven, it definitely is not. Service industry is relationship driven, so is sales and if ever one were to have a 4 day work week in these industries - your NPS or CSAT or Sales would take a tumble

Coming back to the point of context - if India is the context that we are having this discussion, this will never bear fruit. See stats of working population in my previous post and we will be able to understand who is working in regulated vs non regulated industry. The needle is heavily tilted towards the non regulated industry

[pgpex21_param]

Some radical distribution ,promoting work from home , flexible timing etc. are need of the hour and it will also reduce the traffic on roads.

I can tell there is drastic improvement in my life since I joined my new job where I am not worried about daily punch in-punch out.

My questions was will people be willing to be paid less if they opt for 4 day and can they get paid more if they want to work for 6 days +

[am1m]

Originally Posted by pgpex21_param

My questions was will people be willing to be paid less if they opt for 4 day and can they get paid more if they want to work for 6 days +

I can only speak for myself, have already taken a pay cut for an improved quality of life. Left a big company that I worked at for over a decade to join a small company only because of remote work. 3 years later, absolutely no regrets! Quality of life improvement more than made up for the lesser pay and with a couple of increments, I don't think I missed out at all. (Funny thing is I still go into this office 2-3 times a week, when I am in Bangalore, because these guys were sensible enough to have an office near a Metro station!) Even if I was stuck at the same pay-scale I would not complain. My previous commute was absolutely terrible, so not having to spend 2 hours a day in horrible traffic is worth more than extra pay to me. (I'd rather not get cancer, inhaling diesel fumes for years, and would rather remain mentally peaceful not having to drive/ride alongside thug cabbies on the road!)

Similarly, I would also be ok if in the future there was a job that allowed lesser hours for lesser pay. But given our population and competition for jobs, I don't think expecting something like that is realistic.

Freelancing jobs already offer that sort of setup for those so inclined. And at a previous job I worked at, there was a senior, full-time employee who had negotiated a three-day week for lesser pay. But those cases are rare, you need to offer something the company can't get elsewhere. And during a bad quarter, part-time employees are always going to be at risk.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by pgpex21_param

My questions was will people be willing to be paid less if they opt for 4 day and can they get paid more if they want to work for 6 days +

Certainly the case in the Netherlands, where almost 45% of the people work part time! All my kids and their partners work part time.

In certain professions it is considerable higher, e.g. Teaching.

In the Netherlands if you work between 12-36 hours a week is considered part time. You still retain the exact same rights and obligations as somebody working full time, but most of it is prorated. E.g. You have less income, fewer holidays, less pay out on social security, you build less pension and so on.

Many job advertisement will mention specifically whether a position would be part time, or could be done part time.

In many western countries working part time and thus earning less is pretty common.



In general more women than men work part time.

All in all working less for less money is a well established thing. For most people it is about work life balance. Often people will start to work less when they have kids. My kids share looking after their respective children between the two parents on their respective days off.

Jeroen

[Mr.Ogre]

I am doing four day work week and I don't think I can ever go back to working five day week.
I work Wednesday to Saturday and rest of the days are off. The days off feel like a mini vacation and gives ample time to indulge in anything you can fancy.
Now a days I get bored by the time I am into my second day off, but I can live with the boredom. It also helps when planning vacation as you get three days off in a week which helps in saving annual leaves. And no, I am not paid less. I joined my new job with a good hike. Four day week was just bonus.

[NiInJa]

Originally Posted by subraiyr

Are we all discussing this in the Indian context or a much broader context ? This is probably the first question that we need to answer

After 35 years in India and completing a year of living abroad, I think we need to agree on one point before moving this discussion further. India or countries with high income disparity has a completely different way of working and living life in general compared to developed countries. I recently spent a month in Jakarta and it was very similar to India.

In my opinion, a five day working week in India is good enough and ideally should be made uniform across all industries. High salaried individuals/families with kids can afford domestic help, after school tuitions/recreational classes that takes major load off our minds and both partners in a family can work without worrying about household chores. I was one of them enjoying these perks, so did not complain about working 5 days (even stretching my hours occasionally if needed).

Try doing the same in Europe or the U.K. People around me have started panicking since some companies (two big banking biggies) have announced 5 day return to office. Suddenly, full time working couples are worrying that they may not find time to take their kids to any sports activities after school, no time for academic classes like maths as most of these activities close by 6 PM or 7 PM max. Domestic help, after-school stays are charged by the hour and are expensive compared to India. In this sense, a 4 day work week may be of good help, even if it comes at reduced salary, as government takes care of the basics: Healthcare and education.

Personally, I found the biggest factors that contribute to stress is not the office work, but the fact that there is a pileup of chores, right from cooking to drying clothes which you have to do after a mentally tiring day in office. The time you miss out on talking with your kids, not able to follow their academic or sports related progress, missing out on spontaneous fun activities on weekends as your calendars are mostly reserved.

Originally Posted by subraiyr

Every field will have similar stories. While we would like all work to be process driven, it definitely is not. Service industry is relationship driven.

It should not affect ideally, people adapt to such conditions or use technology. I have some personal experiences. In India, my mother-in-law was being treated for some health concern and we had three different doctors for the same job as they worked on rotation in the hospital. Never felt any difference.
In the U.K. this is more evident as well, I have never met the same doctor twice when taking consultations for one bout of sickness. The information is all there in the database and they just refer to it. My brother got a new car recently here and the sales representatives were different on different working days.

Originally Posted by subraiyr

...... But reality is that as competition increases, there is a need for longer studying hours.....

Offtopic: On students attending schools for 6 days. I used to enjoy going on Saturdays but those days were usually kept for sport or non-academic activities. I disagree on increased competition being the reason for longer studying hours. A student should spend as much hours as he needs to to achieve his/her goals. I was told by my teacher in 10th standard, that if you are able to finish your study in 1 hour while others take 3 hours for it, don't waste your time studying because others are, go out and have fun Competition is relative, it will always be there, it cannot be increased or decreased. Some people compete with themselves, losing focus on their health in process.

[SN88]

Forget about working 4 days a week! In India, it is frowned upon just to leave work on time . You need some brave soul to first get up and start walking, and then the remaining get some courage to leave for home!

Countries like India are a different ball game - socially and economically. We cannot compare to European work patterns because of several reasons already stated by members above. We pride ourselves in working hard than smart.

[Mukunthan91]

It's great to see 4 day work week in pilot phase in Europe and in Japan to boost productivity and employee welfare. In India corporate leaders are proposing 70 and 90 hour week for employees. I don't see 4 day work week becoming a reality at least for corporate employees. In India unfortunately productivity is measured by longer working hours than quality of work done.