It needs careful management but if it provides the benefits the trial identified then it makes sense to expand the trial to other councils.
Non paywalled version?
Which councils are being told to plan for 4 day week? This is just campaigners saying “a more sympathetic Labour government could pave the way”
Even of there are no productivity gains it’ll be worth it to wind up ill-informed gobshites like Tarty Screwer, Mike Concrete and her from Hull that was on the Erprernterce.
If you can get in a sick day you have a four day weekend – that is superb
And I bet the East Midlands still sees nothing of this.
The problem is with hybrid working in most councils, it’s hard to actually gage employees productivity. If you take a day away I can’t see a benefit personally.
This story was already posted earlier, without the weird Telegraph spin.
Literally insane we need to be working more not less, work life balance is important but not the point where we are giving tens of thousands of people the ability to do less work! For the same amount of pay!
Unless they’re using it as a way to cut down wages And then make people do the same amount of work in the four days that they’re in?
Update. I’m a big Advocate for flexible working hours not mandating everyone to work a four day week this is because studies have shown that after a while productivity returns back to its 5 days working week levels! & everyone’s then just working a day less!
Didn’t explain that very well in my previous post above!
This is an opinion piece dressed as news, designed to trigger a certain group of people
Brilliant. I work with Councils at the moment and you can’t get hold of anyone or get a decision out of them in a reasonable period of time. This will definitely make it better.
How are they going to deliver services that require people to physically be out doing things? Less hours worked means less places attended. No doubt they will just use it as an excuse to hire a load more people to work part time and then cry there isn’t enough funding. Council tax bills on those of us who have to actually work will go up.
Oh God it’s hard enough to get them to work and do their job in first place
I can’t even get all the work done in a 5 day week. Wouldn’t work in healthcare.
Can they push this to higher education too thank you
Oh hang on; we are less than a week in and the Telegraph is already throwing meat to the base. Nice.
If any party manages to get the four day week to become standard I will abandon all other principles and vote for them for life.
Good! I worked a 4 day week when I started in the NHS (but paid for 5) as part of a pilot scheme and I have never been happier, healthier or more productive at work.
Knowing my local council they’d just shut on Fridays.
I work full time hours but only 4 day weeks with a rolling rota day off
Week 1 – Monday off
Week 2 – Tuesday off
Etc
It’s fantastic at the end of week 5 I get Friday off and start week 1 again with Monday off so I get a 4 day weekend.
It’s been proven in my workplace to reduce sick days. Improve moral, give better work/life balance and best of all appears to show no effect on performance, In fact it appears to improve productivity. With my other colleagues running the same pattern but with differing days. You never lose too many people on a single day and still get full time hours off everyone.
It Also allows me to fill in my rostered day off with overtime and not have to take out of my weekend.
When it was first pitched to me I have no idea why it isn’t more popular.
How about we go back to a six day working week first, before jumping the gun to a four day week?
Eh will see, all these trials seem to be ignoring the obvious elephant in the room: these are not “blind” trials.
Obviously workers will be rather self interested in the short run to work harder in the 4 days so that there is a better chance of them getting it as normal going forward. Once the 4 days has been going on for a few years and its no longer a trial then I am fairly confident productivity will get much, much worse.
They will start campaigning for a 3 day work week then while the council workers, not exactly known for their great work ethics, slack in their 4 days in. I’ll be happy to be wrong, but I doubt it.
I love Angela, not in that way, in the way a real person, can reach high up in Westminster, A role model for girls everywhere, you don’t need to be public school elite, she knows what it’s like to be poor, unlike Sunak and his millionaire friends who think they are entitled, best of luck Angela.
It’ll work because councils assess their own performance and consider it ok, even if by any common sense metric it’s clearly below par. An exhausted user who drops out of their system due to council imcompetence will be counted as successfully helped and one less person on their books. Look at adult social care, where the Mental Capacity Act stipulates 21 days for a deprivation of liberty assessment, but the average for English councils is well over 100 days, but councils collectively don’t see it as a problem and have their own ideas of how long they’re willing to take (basically, don’t get too much worse than whatever number of days they’ve accepted as their average).
Councils generally know they won’t be held accountable, because they’re dealing with the general public and not with people who’ll make enough fuss to make it easier for them to do a proper job than to ignore the problem (same as what has to be done dealing with bureaucracy in post-USSR countries) or sue them.
24 comments
Aren’t we lucky, UBI too!
Of course since we have to phase out finite resources, the council won’t need to be cutting the grass as often, collecting bins as often….
[From a trial in a council it seems to be something that works](https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/08/largest-uk-public-sector-trial-four-day-week-sees-huge-benefits-research-finds-)
It needs careful management but if it provides the benefits the trial identified then it makes sense to expand the trial to other councils.
Non paywalled version?
Which councils are being told to plan for 4 day week? This is just campaigners saying “a more sympathetic Labour government could pave the way”
Even of there are no productivity gains it’ll be worth it to wind up ill-informed gobshites like Tarty Screwer, Mike Concrete and her from Hull that was on the Erprernterce.
If you can get in a sick day you have a four day weekend – that is superb
And I bet the East Midlands still sees nothing of this.
The problem is with hybrid working in most councils, it’s hard to actually gage employees productivity. If you take a day away I can’t see a benefit personally.
This story was already posted earlier, without the weird Telegraph spin.
Literally insane we need to be working more not less, work life balance is important but not the point where we are giving tens of thousands of people the ability to do less work! For the same amount of pay!
Unless they’re using it as a way to cut down wages And then make people do the same amount of work in the four days that they’re in?
Update. I’m a big Advocate for flexible working hours not mandating everyone to work a four day week this is because studies have shown that after a while productivity returns back to its 5 days working week levels! & everyone’s then just working a day less!
Didn’t explain that very well in my previous post above!
This is an opinion piece dressed as news, designed to trigger a certain group of people
Brilliant. I work with Councils at the moment and you can’t get hold of anyone or get a decision out of them in a reasonable period of time. This will definitely make it better.
How are they going to deliver services that require people to physically be out doing things? Less hours worked means less places attended. No doubt they will just use it as an excuse to hire a load more people to work part time and then cry there isn’t enough funding. Council tax bills on those of us who have to actually work will go up.
Oh God it’s hard enough to get them to work and do their job in first place
I can’t even get all the work done in a 5 day week. Wouldn’t work in healthcare.
Can they push this to higher education too thank you
Oh hang on; we are less than a week in and the Telegraph is already throwing meat to the base. Nice.
If any party manages to get the four day week to become standard I will abandon all other principles and vote for them for life.
Good! I worked a 4 day week when I started in the NHS (but paid for 5) as part of a pilot scheme and I have never been happier, healthier or more productive at work.
Knowing my local council they’d just shut on Fridays.
I work full time hours but only 4 day weeks with a rolling rota day off
Week 1 – Monday off
Week 2 – Tuesday off
Etc
It’s fantastic at the end of week 5 I get Friday off and start week 1 again with Monday off so I get a 4 day weekend.
It’s been proven in my workplace to reduce sick days. Improve moral, give better work/life balance and best of all appears to show no effect on performance, In fact it appears to improve productivity. With my other colleagues running the same pattern but with differing days. You never lose too many people on a single day and still get full time hours off everyone.
It Also allows me to fill in my rostered day off with overtime and not have to take out of my weekend.
When it was first pitched to me I have no idea why it isn’t more popular.
How about we go back to a six day working week first, before jumping the gun to a four day week?
Eh will see, all these trials seem to be ignoring the obvious elephant in the room: these are not “blind” trials.
Obviously workers will be rather self interested in the short run to work harder in the 4 days so that there is a better chance of them getting it as normal going forward. Once the 4 days has been going on for a few years and its no longer a trial then I am fairly confident productivity will get much, much worse.
They will start campaigning for a 3 day work week then while the council workers, not exactly known for their great work ethics, slack in their 4 days in. I’ll be happy to be wrong, but I doubt it.
I love Angela, not in that way, in the way a real person, can reach high up in Westminster, A role model for girls everywhere, you don’t need to be public school elite, she knows what it’s like to be poor, unlike Sunak and his millionaire friends who think they are entitled, best of luck Angela.
It’ll work because councils assess their own performance and consider it ok, even if by any common sense metric it’s clearly below par. An exhausted user who drops out of their system due to council imcompetence will be counted as successfully helped and one less person on their books. Look at adult social care, where the Mental Capacity Act stipulates 21 days for a deprivation of liberty assessment, but the average for English councils is well over 100 days, but councils collectively don’t see it as a problem and have their own ideas of how long they’re willing to take (basically, don’t get too much worse than whatever number of days they’ve accepted as their average).
Councils generally know they won’t be held accountable, because they’re dealing with the general public and not with people who’ll make enough fuss to make it easier for them to do a proper job than to ignore the problem (same as what has to be done dealing with bureaucracy in post-USSR countries) or sue them.