Glasgow council four-day week on full pay moves closer after study agreed (opens in new tab)

A colleague in a former workplace tried to quit and was persuaded to stay by the offer of a four day week on the same salary (talented guy, difficult and expensive to replace). From what I could tell the result was that he was highly motivated, continued to be very productive and of course was much happier. I think he took Mondays off, and would use the extra day to go on longer trips at the weekend (often surfing iirc) that he wouldn't have otherwise been able to. I really envied him :)

How could weekends possibly work? Society would come to a complete halt on Saturday and Sunday! For religious reasons we can all accept Sundays off, but Saturdays? Madness!

I did many years of 4 day work weeks, although I was hourly (and doing a "less skilled" labour type job). It was pretty much a 24/7 type operation, so everyone would have four days of work in a row, but would be evenly distributed throughout the week. Everyone loved it. It was 10 hour days (40 hours a week) vs a normal shift which would be 8 hours (but 5 days a week). That extra day off a week is totally worth the extra 2 hours a day.

My company is on a four-day week. We work Monday to Thursday and just close on Fridays. We're transitioning to a three-day week (dropping Mondays) in January.

We're a small software firm, so this obviously may be less feasible for a City Council.

I think your problem is thinking of this council as a "business".

If a local council was a business there would be a fire in the basement one Sunday morning.

Follow on - I do a "kind of" 4 day work week at full pay. four full days then 2 hours of wash up on the Friday. Its highly sector dependant to make it work, couldn't possibly work for everyone if we had SLA's to meet.

We're a small B2B automation systems integrator... We do simply let everyone work tens on Monday-Thursday and not come in on any Friday from June to September.

Business does come to a complete halt on Fridays every week, we just schedule service work, installs, meetings, vendor shipments, etc. for Monday-Thursday.

You might be surprised to learn that the sky does not fall down. Sure, if a customer has a disastrous issue on a Friday, I'll typically get called to remote in and help fix it, but that happens maybe once a month? And if it takes until Monday to resolve the issue, the world does not come to an end.

I took Wednesdays off for about 5 months once to burn PTO (the accrual policy was changing, and I would have been over the cap at the end of the year). That wasn't systemic, most of my colleagues either took more vacations before the change or planned to take some bigger blocks.

It was nice to have a day off in the middle of the week, although I had some occasional meetings, I needed to take, which was bleh. It was also super easy to schedule interviews when I was recruited by a former coworker. Unfortunately, I didn't end up fully using my FMLA newborn leave, because it needed to be used in week long chunks and I had planned to burn PTO first, and use the FMLA weeks later, but I switched jobs instead (and went back to a 5 day week)

Good few folks in my company here in Germany do it, it's pretty common. But it's 80% time for 80% pay. I don't have any metrics in terms of productivity, but my personal impression (coming from freelance life before this) is that the corporate world is so incredibly unproductive and inefficient, you can pretty easily remove 1 - 2 days from the working week and remain as productive.

I imagine a council the size of Glasgow won't have any hourly staff. All those jobs would have been contracted out years ago.

This just means you do 4, 10h days instead of 5 , 8h days. It's the same hours overall.

It would need to be a 25% raise for 4 days of wages to be paid as 5.

My 4 day WW dream is 4 day weekends (Fri + Mon) off, alternating with a standard 2 day weekend.

But to your point, a 4DWW does have to mean any give office is open only 4 days. It, at least in theory, only means less ppl available on any given day. That said, I'd prefer to see more stores and services - gov or not - open later on Thur so I can get done what needs to get done with adding friction to a day off.

I take Tuesdays off. It’s nice to come in Monday after the weekend and sort some things out, then have Tuesday off, then have three days together. Sometimes I switch it but four days together is a lot when you’re not used to it!

That you need the routine and language to line up still is interesting to me.

Would not Thursday just come to “feel” like Friday?

That feeling MUST come on the day called Friday, though.

There’s a nascent religious movement here if you want it enough. “Fellowship to keep Friday feeling like Friday”

This is explained in the article. The intent is to evaluate 100:80:100, which is 100% pay for 80% of the hours in return for a commitment to maintain 100% productivity.

Imagine if they did both and cut taxes, thus leaving people with more money to spend on things that create jobs…

Well to be fair Glasgow City Council will still be able to collect the same amount of council tax regardless of how well the provide services. It's easy to do a four day week if there is no relation between performance and income.

Why is paying people for working a day less great? I think most residents would prefer to see their bins emptied more frequently than have council workers get a day off while being paid for it.

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgows-rat-problem-made...

Not that great. UK is facing a cost of living crisis caused by too much government spending and in particular governments paying people to not work.

There's a second issue because it's Glasgow. For Scotland to become viably independent it needs to wean itself off English subsidies. This sort of thing is the opposite and reinforces the general impression that the Scots aren't serious about independence. They can't afford even their current levels of spending on their own. Really is not affordable even with the rest of the UK involved, but especially not alone.

Lots of 4 day week companies without a 20% pay cut:

https://4dayweek.io/companies

They approved a trial for Glasgow city council workers - so they approved it for themselves.

I do see your point though - it could've been a bit clearer

The city council approved a trial for Glasgow city council workers - they approved it for themselves - they don't have control over anyone else.

As others have pointed out - it’s the city of Glasgow trialing this work week.

That said, in most (all?) countries, workplace is a regulated relationship. That means there are labor laws and you as an employer of others have to follow them. Even as an employer of self, some laws still apply. In some places you cannot require 6 days a week, in others you can but must pay overtime. As a society we agree on certain concessions with our rights in order to protect others. If you don’t like the concessions a given society has made, look for one that meets your values better.

> are they going to offer tax breaks to incentivize companies to adopt a four-day workweek?

I'm going to assume you're asking if they'll offset any losses that occur as a result of employees only being 80% as productive.

You may be surprised to discover that studies overwhelmingly demonstrate that productivity is higher across 4 days than across 5 days. That's right, higher output in less time, all thanks to employees being better rested and coming to work in a better mental state.

British Councils aren't like US States if that's what you're thinking - they're just local administrative systems. They manage your trash collection - they aren't legislating or regulating anything to anyone.

100:80:100 model.

100% pay, 80% hours, 100% productivity.

> Doesn't this mean the Glasgow City Council is overstaffed and should layoff 20% of their workers?

Only if you think 100:100:100 for 40 hours a week is possible / realistic. Are you honestly operating at 100% effectiveness for every hour you work all week?

I suspect the adage about "a measure which becomes a target ceases to become a good measure" applies here

Part of the reason most workers work a set number of hours rather than negotiating piecework or payment delivered on achieving KPIs or set objectives, after all, is that organizations seldom have a concrete idea of what output they expect over a period of time. (And some of the objectives that are clearly defined and stable over time like "drive this bus route" or "answer calls during this period" actually collapse quite well into working hours)