ASK THE HEADHUNTER 4-day workweek, 5 days of pay?

[deanwebb]

4-day workweek, 5 days of pay?

Nick’s take on 4-day workweek A 4-day workweek for 5 days pay is really about efficiency. And I think we all know it. Many successful businesses seem to succeed in spite of themselves, because employees find ways to get the work done. Cut the work week to 4 days, and it seems workers figure out how to still get it all done for the same pay. Don’t miss the quote from the Stanford professor who suggests cutting the work week and cutting pay — what do you think of that? Is a 4-day workweek really feasible? What would it take

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Source: 4-day workweek, 5 days of pay?

[deanwebb]

My comment:

So how does this play out for people with billable hour targets? Are we looking at reducing overall compensation for those roles in exchange for a Monday or Friday off? Or do we turn bench time into free time? In any case, this puts more pressure on the balance between being billable and training, especially for people in the IT sector. I've got a team where we're working hard to meet our billable % goals *and* to keep up with developments in our product and tech in general, and I'd really like them to not burn out... so how do I fit all those pieces together in a way that keeps them happy, same pay, and just as productive or better?

[icecream-guy]

Here in the US, the federal employees have AWS  Alternate Work Schedule,  where they work 8 nine hour days, and 1 eight hour day, and have 1 day off every two weeks. essentially working 80 hours in 9 days.

[icecream-guy]

My comment:

So how does this play out for people with billable hour targets? Are we looking at reducing overall compensation for those roles in exchange for a Monday or Friday off? Or do we turn bench time into free time? In any case, this puts more pressure on the balance between being billable and training, especially for people in the IT sector. I've got a team where we're working hard to meet our billable % goals *and* to keep up with developments in our product and tech in general, and I'd really like them to not burn out... so how do I fit all those pieces together in a way that keeps them happy, same pay, and just as productive or better?

what we try to do is keep everyone at no more that 40 hours per week,  then is just becomes a staffing and scheduling issue,  for the billable people, you should know how many billable hours are needed to fulfill the contract.  and work it out from there,  the scheduling issue, is that everyone wants to take Friday afternoon off,  then the LMOTP gets stuck working the Friday afternoons.  problems arise when, at the end of the pay period, someone has done there 80 and is on call, and gets called out and has to work more.  then it's just a write-off for that poor sucker.

[Otanx]

We have the same AWS scehdule Ristau mentions as an option where I work. We can also do 4x10s. For several years we were doing a 4x10s with alternating Mondays/Fridays off. So you would get a 2 day weekend followed by a four day weekend. We also have a couple groups that support 24x7 doing Panamas.

It does not look like this study covered anyone who bills or is paid by the hour. This looks like it focused on increased productivity between 40 hours vs 32 hours. Some jobs this does not work. If I need something manned 24x7 then I just increased costs by 20%. I may not get the benefits from increased productivity. For example a security guard. I still need a guard 24x7.

For billable jobs in theory you would bill 20% less hours, but at 20% increased billing rate because the work is 20% more efficient. Of course that isn't going to be how it works, but that would be the theory.

-Otanx