this is something I didn’t expect would bother me until it did
growing up I thought “part time” hours meant you could just pick a set of hours and work but that’s “contract work” instead (don’t get me started on time sheets)
and so for full time in thought you get to pick your days or schedule or any, nope, all HR and company policy.
I’d work 4x10s if I could and have a nicer and longer weekend if I could
Plenty of employers do take this approach. 4x10 isn’t an unknown work schedule. But a lot of firms are client facing and demand business hours coverage. What do you do when a client needs something on Friday (or Saturday or Sunday)?
What do you do with staff for the back half of the 10, when clients aren’t around demanding support because the business day is over?
4x10 works best when everyone you work for is either also 4x10 or on such a time delay that it doesn’t matter.
Or you just stagger your workforce. Some are off Mondays, some are off Fridays, some can choose a midweek day as their regular day off. It’s not super complicated; managers just don’t want to put any effort into changing this.
Definitely possible but also harder to manage. You need more redundancy in your workforce. You need good documentation of workflow and roles. You need a system for handing off work between staff and people roll on and off a project.
It’s all possible. But it takes effort and some marginal degree of expense that a lot of admins don’t want to put forward. Bosses are naturally cheap and lazy. That’s why union leadership is necessary to improve the workplace.
Agreed on every point. It’s possible. Bosses are bloated in that they’re largely ineffective and are more costly to the salary chunk of budget. If they were expected to accomplish things like workers are, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
In reality, we should be implementing 4 8s as full time since study after study has shown that productivity actually increases when executed properly. There is measurable incentive for companies to transition to it.
The business has more than one person working so there’s adequate coverage.
We run some 10x4 but also a lot of 9x9. This is gonna leave some days with reduced coverage if it’s one person but, well, we aren’t one person. Everyone chooses a different day to be their “flex” day when they’re off. Everything is covered.
The business has more than one person working so there’s adequate coverage.
Unless everyone had identical knowledge, there is not. Good luck getting your HR lead to fix a server error or your pipeline engineer to submit your quarterly financials.
this is something I didn’t expect would bother me until it did
growing up I thought “part time” hours meant you could just pick a set of hours and work but that’s “contract work” instead (don’t get me started on time sheets)
and so for full time in thought you get to pick your days or schedule or any, nope, all HR and company policy.
I’d work 4x10s if I could and have a nicer and longer weekend if I could
White collar, I’ll take one 40h block please. 2 20’s if necessary. no rest for the wicked…
A 10 hour day leaves me drained with no energy for anything after work
yes but for me every day at work leaves me with no energy on a 9 to 5 so I’d rather have 4 no energy days than 5
Turns out most people would actually, there have been multiple surveys done now and that’s always the winner, but then how would businesses cope?
By actually being better than their competition and “let the free market decide”? Oh wait, no, that’s just for deregulation.
Plenty of employers do take this approach. 4x10 isn’t an unknown work schedule. But a lot of firms are client facing and demand business hours coverage. What do you do when a client needs something on Friday (or Saturday or Sunday)?
What do you do with staff for the back half of the 10, when clients aren’t around demanding support because the business day is over?
4x10 works best when everyone you work for is either also 4x10 or on such a time delay that it doesn’t matter.
Or you just stagger your workforce. Some are off Mondays, some are off Fridays, some can choose a midweek day as their regular day off. It’s not super complicated; managers just don’t want to put any effort into changing this.
Definitely possible but also harder to manage. You need more redundancy in your workforce. You need good documentation of workflow and roles. You need a system for handing off work between staff and people roll on and off a project.
It’s all possible. But it takes effort and some marginal degree of expense that a lot of admins don’t want to put forward. Bosses are naturally cheap and lazy. That’s why union leadership is necessary to improve the workplace.
Agreed on every point. It’s possible. Bosses are bloated in that they’re largely ineffective and are more costly to the salary chunk of budget. If they were expected to accomplish things like workers are, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
In reality, we should be implementing 4 8s as full time since study after study has shown that productivity actually increases when executed properly. There is measurable incentive for companies to transition to it.
Raising my little red and yellow flag with “Technocracy” spelled out in hammers and sickles.
The business has more than one person working so there’s adequate coverage.
We run some 10x4 but also a lot of 9x9. This is gonna leave some days with reduced coverage if it’s one person but, well, we aren’t one person. Everyone chooses a different day to be their “flex” day when they’re off. Everything is covered.
Is it that companies are stuck thinking small?
Unless everyone had identical knowledge, there is not. Good luck getting your HR lead to fix a server error or your pipeline engineer to submit your quarterly financials.