Utah Four Day Work Week Environmentally Friendly
Not sure whether you would consider this a dream come true or not, depending on the hit your bank will take, but Utah has become the first US state to make it mandatory to take a three day weekend. Their guise is for environmental friendliness, but I think we can all see through that.
Governor Jon Huntsman, a first-term Republican, has introduced the change, which will affect the majority of state employees, in an attempt to reduce the state’s carbon footprint, increase energy efficiency, improve customer service and provide workers more flexibility. “The reaction (from the public) has been very much a willingness to give this a go,” he says.
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The four day work week is not as uncommon as I first thought, with forms of it popping up all across the US. The USA Today article notes that “The four-day work week is fairly common among city and county governments…” and it continues:
Jacqueline Byers, director of research at the National Association of Counties, says the four-day work week is gaining in popularity among county governments. Marion County, Fla., has a mandatory four-day work week for employees; Oconee County, S.C., and Walworth County, Wis., have it for road work crews, while Will County, Ill., has it for the auditor’s office. Oakland County, Mich., is seeking volunteers for a four-day work week, and Miami-Dade County, Fla., and Suffolk County, N.Y., are moving toward it, she says
It is a rather drastic measure, cutting an entire day out of a work week, but one that is sure to make a big impact. While in the months to come – the new system is set to go into effect on August 4 – I’m sure we’ll see statistics explaining what the cutback has done specifically for the environment, but there is more. Such a measure, already seen to be working throughout smaller counties and cities, is another example of how local and individual changes are having large impacts.
There will obviously be some immediate negative impacts. “One thing that has to be changed is the level of expectation from taxpayers, because they’ve always wanted five-day access,” Byers says. “They have to adjust to offices that are open longer on weekdays, but closed on Fridays.”
In addition, longer work days will create problems for those dealing with public transport and childcare, but the Utah government is looking to have these issues ironed out before the August 4th start date.
In fact, Rex Facer, an assistant professor at Brigham Young University whose research team is studying the four-day work week concept, believes that such a change will have impacts on the work-life balance as well. “More and more young workers are entering the work force,” Facer says. “They’re looking for ways to enhance their work-life balance. Alternative work schedules offer more of this work-life balance than do traditional work schedules.”
So all in all, I can hardly see where this can go wrong!
credit: Bree D. at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
I have seen a lot of things on having a 4 day work week. The general consensus is that employees are much happier, and productivity improves. Several other countries have had employment options like this for much longer.
The Kellogs cereal plant used to implement a work situation similar to this from 1930-1980. Employees liked it very much because it gave them more time with their families. Of course this was during the depression, and the reason Kellog did this in the first place was to give more jobs to more people.
As far as productivity increasing - think of how much time it takes you to get into your groove every morning when you get to work, and how often times you quit being productive before the end of your work day. Lengthening 4 days and cutting out that 5th day cuts out on this time. Also, it cuts out the travel time to and from work of an extra day.
I currently work that type of schedule, and I love it! I work nearly 10 hrs a day for 4 days, and it gives me a whole other day I can be outdoors doing the things I love, and getting home a couple hours later on my work days doesn’t have much of an effect on my home life.
Even more important to achieving work-life balance than the number of days worked is the number of hours worked in a week. If the work week is going to be shortened, employers and employees should share the daily burden by reducing the work week by four hours so that the day only has to be one hour longer during the week.
Getting through the workday is hard enough as it is.
i don’t see how anyone could complain about this or say its laziness. Work/life balance is so important. Of course there will be difficulties as with any new implementation but to complain is a waste of time. Its about making adjustments and then it will work. I would much rather work 4 long days (nothing different than what I already do) than work 5 shorter. And to be quite honest, uhhhh, what truly needs to change is the level of expectations regarding what employees need to accomplish in their work day. Some places are decent but I’ve experienced ridiculous expectations, which I’ve met while sacrificing my own sense of peace and happiness to meet those expectations. I’ve had to learn to put myself first and that is also what having a 4 day workweek is about. I wish they made it national.
You guys are missing the point. Restaurants and businesses that give their employees a four day workweek is the point. They can still open 7 days a week but they can have employees staggered through the schedule.
Owners of businesses will obviously have to make up their own mind about their days and I’m assuming most will want to stay open all 7 days as usual. Obviously they can’t afford to close and expect the same amount of money. As it stands however, most business owners chose to stay open as much as possible already for the same reason. The point is to offer the employees that opporunity. The best offer is give the choice to the employee so that the complainers can stick to their 5 day and whoever wants 4 days can do so too.
“I would much rather go 4 long than 5 straight.” that sounds gay…
but what is missed here is the fact that people are not productive working over 8 hours a day. study after study has proven this. so if there is any “savings” it will be out weighed in less productivity and more mistakes. if they really want to save energy (which cannot be done by having a building occupied the same 40 hours a week but doing in in one less day, you still use the same amount of energy) they would do a 32 hour work week. they would also find that people can get just as much done in those hours if they cut out unnecessary meetings! and having 3 days off would lead to happier, healthier and more productive employees.
On April 26, 2008, the New York Times reported that the State of Ohio already had a 4-day workweek for state employees and was requiring a return to the 8 a.m. to 5 a.m. Mondady through Friday workweek. Apparently, the needs of the public and other state offices were not appropriately taken care of. 4-day workweeks, flex-time is great for individauls life styles but not for the public. With a nation and economy in decline; I don’t believe this is the time to indulge individuals lifestyles.
Its going to improve customer service? Did somebody actually say that?
Great, as if American’s social workers weren’t fat and lazy enough, now they get another day to gorge themselves sitting in front of their televisions to fatten up even more. How in the world anyone thinks that less productivity is going to result in higher efficiency is beyond me; it will never happen. Now the public, who doesn’t even have the luxury of that other day off, has even less time to get their administrative needs served. Not only because they don’t have that extra day, but now every other day of the week is going to have an increase of 5-20% of additional people that would otherwise be served on the 5th day.
They say that extra two hours a day will counter the one day of 8 hours, but I would be highly surprised if it would. You’re going to have your employees working longer days, which will result in more stress. Generally, people become stressed out when a bunch of small litter annoyances continually occur, so subjecting your workforce to two additional hours a day of the general public is going to cause issues.
There’s almost no benefit to be had from this at all except “woo 3 day weekends!!” This doesn’t even help reduce labor costs, as you’re working everyone the same amount of time and offices are up and running equally as long. As far as the “green” to be had, it’s ludicrous to assume it’s going to have a major beneficial impact.
Sure, it may reduce all state employees from having to drive to work 52days out of the year, but it enables them to have that 3 day weekend to take a trip to the lake or what-have-you. Regardless, the more time you allow a person for recreation the more they’re going to utilize it, and that could lead to an increase of travel time that won’t offset the reduction made by reducing the work week one day. Driving around taking care of errands, visiting friends, or any other activity that would otherwise be postponed, can now be taken care of each and every weekend.
The possibly biggest impact this will have is enabling parents to pick their kids up from school on that Friday afternoon. Keep in mind this is the state of Utah, and the average family is a family of 4 or 5. Sure, it may not seem that significant, but allowing hundreds of people to drive their own automobile to pick up their children, who would otherwise use natural gas public transportation, are going to cause the biggest side-effect of all.
When you look at the pros and cons to be had from allowing people an extra day off, it’s quite clear that whatever good can be gained will be so insignificantly beneficial that to even consider it’s implementation would be a waste of time. Instead, make the work day one hour longer, and give everyone a two hour lunch. This gives everyone a chance to relax during the middle of the day, take care of any pressing issues that may have arose in the morning (which if unable to be resolved until the end of the day, will create stress and anxiety that can distract the employee during their shift all day long), and allows everyone who gets off work @ 5pm, to get in and take care of business in that last hour. Like many legislative measures taken in Utah, it seems very little thought and public opinion were given at any stage of its indoctrination, and it was left up to a small group of like-minded parties who only sought to push for their own personal agenda claiming their position of status inherent of good judgment.
Now this could work (4 day work week) if they changed a few other things all so. Let’s take the amount of hours kids spend in school. In most places in the world kids spend 10-12 hours a day in school with no 3 month summer break. So if they changed the hours kids spend in school to 10 hours a day 4 days of week also and no more summer break. How well would that work out. Or wait even a 12 hour school day 4 days a week how much would that cut down on child care if most of the worker were working 4 day 40 hour weeks. Isn’t the 8 hour school based around an 8 hour work day? The U.S. school system sucks, it mite get up to par with the rest of the world if they went 12 hours of for 4 days a week. We can not be a great country if we do not have great kids. Great kids become great adults.