Unilever to try out four-day working week in New Zealand

This is hardly a significant trial.<p><pre><code> Unilever said all 81 staff members at its offices across New Zealand will be able to participate in the trial... </code></pre> Only 81 possible candidates, and not all of them might choose to participate.<p>I&#x27;d be curious to see the results of a trial involving thousands of employees. Some subset of 81, though... almost meaningless.<p>There&#x27;s a tremendous inertia when it comes to work weeks. The five-day is locked in pretty firmly in the developed world, and a company that tries to change that risks getting out of synch with suppliers, subcontractors, and partners. &quot;Today&#x27;s Thursday. Our office is closed on Fridays, so we&#x27;ll have to schedule that call for Tuesday, because one of our suppliers is closed on Mondays.&quot;<p>I mean, they can try it, and employees might like the extra time off, but it might well slow things down and ultimately result in commensurately lower salaries and bonuses.

Just to remind everyone of another, apparently successful, four-day week experiment, also in New Zealand<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;2018&#x2F;oct&#x2F;02&#x2F;no-downside-new-zealand-firm-adopts-four-day-week-after-successful-trial" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;2018&#x2F;oct&#x2F;02&#x2F;no-downside-ne...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Four-day_week" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Four-day_week</a>

They should do four work days and then a whole day of pointless zoom calls.<p>Oh wait that’s basically the normal arrangement isn’t it

This seems counter to the longer trend of knowledge workers coordinating asynchronously and working when focused &amp; inspired.<p>Speaking personally, over the years I probably wasted 10,000 hours... sitting in an office in the late afternoon, waiting for silicon valley traffic to clear enough to go home.

Hack, according to Keynes we are supposed to be working 15-hour weeks by now. Four-day week is well overdue.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econ.yale.edu&#x2F;smith&#x2F;econ116a&#x2F;keynes1.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econ.yale.edu&#x2F;smith&#x2F;econ116a&#x2F;keynes1.pdf</a>

I&#x27;m surprised this is news. Here in europe you can work 32 hours if you wanted to, but you make 20% less money. Would you work one day less for 20% of your base salary?<p>In terms of reward, this is like a 25% raise. Imagine getting a raise of 25%.<p>I&#x27;m interested how much the raises the past ten years were. Is this a big thing, or is this an overdue raise for the past ten years.<p>Will they compensate the lost labor with new hires? If not, you could also see it as Unilever firing 20% of its workforce, and it could indicate something has gone wrong with their business (I know, corona is probably the cause, but what if it is something else).<p>Initiatives to work smarter sound promotional. It sure sounds better than &#x27;our sales people have nothing to do during corona&#x27;.<p>Overall, I would be happy to have more free time.

&gt; “If we end up in a situation where the team is working four extended days then we miss the point of this,” he said.<p>I believe this is lip service. They will still ultimately expect 40 hours of work to be done in 4 days, regardless of what they say now. I&#x27;d rather stick to 5-8s, so I have some personal time in the evenings.

Unilever if you need a software dev on NZ I&#x27;m keen.

I&#x27;m always sceptical of these proposals. There are no free lunches in economics. Less production will result in less revenue. Companies are only going compensate employees for value of their labour, so less labour will eventually mean less compensation.<p>Perhaps for some reason that I don&#x27;t quite understand people get more (or an almost equalivent) amount of work done in four days as they do in five, but if not, this is just going to result in lower wages.

Anyone live in NZ? I want to move there. How does it compare vs the US or UK?

I mean what does anyone do at Unilever? Maybe consider a 1 day work week?