<story><title>How a four-day workweek works, from the companies pulling it off</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/how-a-4-day-workweek-actually-works-from-the-companies-pulling-it-off-1a5c0e2a</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This article is so dramatic.  &amp;quot;Look at how hard it was for these companies to go to four days a week.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not hard.  You just declare Friday a weekend.  Then you do everything like before.&lt;p&gt;Did you have meetings on weekends?  No?  Good, move the Friday ones to another day because they&amp;#x27;re on the weekend now.  Who is going to answer customer support emails on Friday?  The same people who answered on Saturday and Sunday, and maybe you&amp;#x27;ll pay them extra work on the weekend.  What if we can&amp;#x27;t get everything done?  You probably weren&amp;#x27;t getting everything done before, and you either worked on Saturday or just said screw it.  Do the same thing.&lt;p&gt;The only slightly reasonable issue brought up was the lawyers who wanted to work four days but kept having to go to court on Friday.  Yes, if you work with external entities, you either have to be willing to say no to working on Friday or if you can&amp;#x27;t, you have to wait for them to also move to four days.  But very few people are actually in a position where they can&amp;#x27;t say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions).&lt;p&gt;The WSJ wants to make it sound like a massive undertaking because they are pro-business and anti-worker.  Don&amp;#x27;t buy the hype.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ncallaway</author><text>&amp;gt; But very few people are actually in a position where they can&amp;#x27;t say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions).&lt;p&gt;Yea, I agree with this. As the lawyer, when the court asks you your preferred dates for scheduling something, don&amp;#x27;t give them a Friday.&lt;p&gt;If the Court asks you to schedule something on a Friday, you could politely request it moved to another day. If the Court says: &amp;quot;too bad, this Court works Fridays, and I&amp;#x27;m going to schedule something for Friday&amp;quot;, then you show up on Friday. Exactly the same way that you would if the Court said: &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m going to schedule something for a Saturday&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>How a four-day workweek works, from the companies pulling it off</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/how-a-4-day-workweek-actually-works-from-the-companies-pulling-it-off-1a5c0e2a</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This article is so dramatic.  &amp;quot;Look at how hard it was for these companies to go to four days a week.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not hard.  You just declare Friday a weekend.  Then you do everything like before.&lt;p&gt;Did you have meetings on weekends?  No?  Good, move the Friday ones to another day because they&amp;#x27;re on the weekend now.  Who is going to answer customer support emails on Friday?  The same people who answered on Saturday and Sunday, and maybe you&amp;#x27;ll pay them extra work on the weekend.  What if we can&amp;#x27;t get everything done?  You probably weren&amp;#x27;t getting everything done before, and you either worked on Saturday or just said screw it.  Do the same thing.&lt;p&gt;The only slightly reasonable issue brought up was the lawyers who wanted to work four days but kept having to go to court on Friday.  Yes, if you work with external entities, you either have to be willing to say no to working on Friday or if you can&amp;#x27;t, you have to wait for them to also move to four days.  But very few people are actually in a position where they can&amp;#x27;t say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions).&lt;p&gt;The WSJ wants to make it sound like a massive undertaking because they are pro-business and anti-worker.  Don&amp;#x27;t buy the hype.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>manicennui</author><text>I was surprised to see this in the WSJ at all. Obviously they did it so they could sow doubt. This entire article is likely PR for ActivTrak though:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Many four-day-week employers don’t appear to be operating more efficiently, though, according to data from ActivTrak, a maker of workforce analytics software. Gabriela Mauch, vice president of ActivTrak’s productivity lab, suspects that is because management hasn’t revamped the way teams work.&amp;quot;</text></comment>