The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
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@ChrisMayLA6 I really like the focus and I always enjoy Anna's reporting, but I can't help notice the glaring "both sides" supposedly objective framing (that is also so common in the US). It always seems to end up actually sounding like support for the status quo. ("Sure, it works there but will never work here" exceptionalism.)
that will be the BBC 'editorial guidance' I imagine
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I’ve seen a bunch of productivity studies that say productivity for knowledge workers peaks at around 20 hours a week, plateaus until about 40, and then declines, so someone working 30 hours a week will achieve as much as someone working 40 (the problem comes when someone decides to use the extra time off to work a second job, which then hits their productivity in both). Above around 60 hours a week, net productivity tends to be negative: you (or other people) spend longer fixing your mistakes than making forward progress.
But a couple of years ago I was chatting to a researcher who studied productivity in construction workers and I was initially surprised that it was similar. Bit it makes sense: construction work has a lot of classes of error that are incredibly expensive to fix. Pour concrete in the wrong place and that’s a few person-days of jackhammering to fix. Misread the plans and put power or plumbing into the wrong place and you may need to rip out some finishing or even structural bits to be able to fix it (or need to adjust the design to work around it). Working when not properly rested and relaxed in such an environment can easily flip you into net-negative productivity.
yes, my observation of my colleagues at university (before I retired) would support that claim too
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I’ve seen a bunch of productivity studies that say productivity for knowledge workers peaks at around 20 hours a week, plateaus until about 40, and then declines, so someone working 30 hours a week will achieve as much as someone working 40 (the problem comes when someone decides to use the extra time off to work a second job, which then hits their productivity in both). Above around 60 hours a week, net productivity tends to be negative: you (or other people) spend longer fixing your mistakes than making forward progress.
But a couple of years ago I was chatting to a researcher who studied productivity in construction workers and I was initially surprised that it was similar. Bit it makes sense: construction work has a lot of classes of error that are incredibly expensive to fix. Pour concrete in the wrong place and that’s a few person-days of jackhammering to fix. Misread the plans and put power or plumbing into the wrong place and you may need to rip out some finishing or even structural bits to be able to fix it (or need to adjust the design to work around it). Working when not properly rested and relaxed in such an environment can easily flip you into net-negative productivity.
@david_chisnall Oh, I now so much want to read those papers!
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I’ve seen a bunch of productivity studies that say productivity for knowledge workers peaks at around 20 hours a week, plateaus until about 40, and then declines, so someone working 30 hours a week will achieve as much as someone working 40 (the problem comes when someone decides to use the extra time off to work a second job, which then hits their productivity in both). Above around 60 hours a week, net productivity tends to be negative: you (or other people) spend longer fixing your mistakes than making forward progress.
But a couple of years ago I was chatting to a researcher who studied productivity in construction workers and I was initially surprised that it was similar. Bit it makes sense: construction work has a lot of classes of error that are incredibly expensive to fix. Pour concrete in the wrong place and that’s a few person-days of jackhammering to fix. Misread the plans and put power or plumbing into the wrong place and you may need to rip out some finishing or even structural bits to be able to fix it (or need to adjust the design to work around it). Working when not properly rested and relaxed in such an environment can easily flip you into net-negative productivity.
@david_chisnall @ChrisMayLA6 This was known a century ago. The UK 40hr week was finally established when WW1 showed that munitions factory productivity peaked there and the 60hr emergency working was counter productive.
It's a symptom of our abysmal managerial expertise and training in the UK that this isn't known by default by all managers and company boards. -
yes agree; one of the clear misapprehensions is that everyone should work the *same* four days
@ChrisMayLA6 Indeed. The 5th day is in systems theory called 'slack' and this is required to keep any system under control.
The odds are very high that you are familiar with this. I still thought it was important to emphasize, since it is an politically impartial argument.
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@ChrisMayLA6 Indeed. The 5th day is in systems theory called 'slack' and this is required to keep any system under control.
The odds are very high that you are familiar with this. I still thought it was important to emphasize, since it is an politically impartial argument.
@ChrisMayLA6 Note by coincidence or not, 20% is usually also considered the right amount of slack for a lot of systems.
Zooming out. A lot of systems in the end require change, nothing stays the same. So this slack might turn out to be the difference between 'running down' and 'sustainable maintenance'.
And that pertains likely equally to machines and humans.
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The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
as so often, real political economic change can be organic rather than forced, and in the UK while at an early stage of this process, the four day working week is slowly but surely e becoming more widely adopted. Good!
#workers #FourDayWeek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y85xdyw3o@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us What a strange article. "Hey, loads of folk in the Netherlands work four days, they love it and companies are still doing really well....but some people at the OECD think it's a bad idea - let's write about that instead!"
Curiously when looking for charts of GPD per capita over time I can't find the "lack of growth" that supposedly points to the Netherlands' potential downfall.
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The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
as so often, real political economic change can be organic rather than forced, and in the UK while at an early stage of this process, the four day working week is slowly but surely e becoming more widely adopted. Good!
#workers #FourDayWeek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y85xdyw3o@ChrisMayLA6 one more time kudos for Netherlands. If we had a public central planning instead of this neoliberalism controlled by corporations we would be working less than 10 hours week on non voluntary jobs.
Freedom was supposed to be important, right?
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@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us What a strange article. "Hey, loads of folk in the Netherlands work four days, they love it and companies are still doing really well....but some people at the OECD think it's a bad idea - let's write about that instead!"
Curiously when looking for charts of GPD per capita over time I can't find the "lack of growth" that supposedly points to the Netherlands' potential downfall.
@wayne @ChrisMayLA6 the BBC has form on this - South Cambs DC has used a four-day week to solve a really bad recruitment and retention problem with positive results, but the article spends most of its time trying to find negative voxpops from people who don't know anything about it:
BBC News - Can South Cambridgeshire council do five days' work in four? - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l97gnpyd5o?app-referrer=search -
@wayne @ChrisMayLA6 the BBC has form on this - South Cambs DC has used a four-day week to solve a really bad recruitment and retention problem with positive results, but the article spends most of its time trying to find negative voxpops from people who don't know anything about it:
BBC News - Can South Cambridgeshire council do five days' work in four? - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l97gnpyd5o?app-referrer=search@Flisty @wayne @ChrisMayLA6
100% I'm really done with articles where they find a bunch of retired folk to moan about how workers aren't worked hard enough.If the BBC had been around in the 19th century, we'd have had articles going "This city outlawed child labour, but how will it clean its cotton mills?".
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@Flisty @wayne @ChrisMayLA6
100% I'm really done with articles where they find a bunch of retired folk to moan about how workers aren't worked hard enough.If the BBC had been around in the 19th century, we'd have had articles going "This city outlawed child labour, but how will it clean its cotton mills?".
@thecasualcritic @Flisty @wayne @ChrisMayLA6
The sad thing is that every time the BBC publishes an article like this it loses just a little more of the trust and respect it once had, and the UK’s soft power is yet further eroded, too.
#BBC #UKPolitics #SoftPower -
@thecasualcritic @Flisty @wayne @ChrisMayLA6
The sad thing is that every time the BBC publishes an article like this it loses just a little more of the trust and respect it once had, and the UK’s soft power is yet further eroded, too.
#BBC #UKPolitics #SoftPower@KimSJ @thecasualcritic @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 but the entirely politically neutral board requires 100% balanced reporting - surely that's reasonable
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@KimSJ @thecasualcritic @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 but the entirely politically neutral board requires 100% balanced reporting - surely that's reasonable
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@KimSJ @thecasualcritic @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 but the entirely politically neutral board requires 100% balanced reporting - surely that's reasonable
@Flisty @KimSJ @wayne @ChrisMayLA6
I will concede the point once they find someone to argue in favour of fully automated luxury communism in every article in the business section
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The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
as so often, real political economic change can be organic rather than forced, and in the UK while at an early stage of this process, the four day working week is slowly but surely e becoming more widely adopted. Good!
#workers #FourDayWeek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y85xdyw3o@ChrisMayLA6
I absolutely must know who is having a 4 day work week "forced" on them. -
@Flisty @KimSJ @wayne @ChrisMayLA6
I will concede the point once they find someone to argue in favour of fully automated luxury communism in every article in the business section@thecasualcritic @KimSJ @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 or indeed just anyone mentioning Brexit as a *factor*, let alone a cause, when sluggish growth/productivity/trade/anything else is covered...
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The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
as so often, real political economic change can be organic rather than forced, and in the UK while at an early stage of this process, the four day working week is slowly but surely e becoming more widely adopted. Good!
#workers #FourDayWeek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y85xdyw3o@ChrisMayLA6 I was reminded recently about one of my primary school teachers and her love of "art and clart Wednesday."
Every Wednesday we'd spend the day painting, making, drawing, baking, sewing and so on. To us, it was just a fun day. While learning all sorts of life skills, we also relaxed. Come Thursday, we were fresh and ready to knuckle down to our sums and writing. According to Mum, the teacher described it as like getting two Mondays a week from us.
I hadn't quite seen it before, but looking back it was another form of four-day week. Obviously we were present for five days, but Wednesdays never felt like working.
There must be many ways to structure it for different situations. -
@thecasualcritic @KimSJ @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 or indeed just anyone mentioning Brexit as a *factor*, let alone a cause, when sluggish growth/productivity/trade/anything else is covered...
@thecasualcritic @KimSJ @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 actually more than Brexit I get annoyed about the wall-to-wall "immigrants are bad/immigration is high/small boats are illegal" and "taxes are too high/increasing taxes is bad". Neither of these hegemonies are ever ever questioned.
Also I am increasingly entertained by how much time Chris Mason dedicates to how bad Starmer/Reeves are. The "Reeves lied!" thing went on for about two weeks -
The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
as so often, real political economic change can be organic rather than forced, and in the UK while at an early stage of this process, the four day working week is slowly but surely e becoming more widely adopted. Good!
#workers #FourDayWeek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y85xdyw3o@ChrisMayLA6 They've had this for a long time. When I lived in
in the late 80's, it seemed nobody came back from lunch on Friday and weren't at work until after lunch on Monday. 
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@wayne @ChrisMayLA6 the BBC has form on this - South Cambs DC has used a four-day week to solve a really bad recruitment and retention problem with positive results, but the article spends most of its time trying to find negative voxpops from people who don't know anything about it:
BBC News - Can South Cambridgeshire council do five days' work in four? - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l97gnpyd5o?app-referrer=searchAnd of course, rather than engage with the evidence, central government has simply decided to abolish South Cambs DC as part of its unitarization programme. Sigh.
