[am1m]

As always, the number of forward thinking organizations, those who empower their Human Resources department to actually care about...human resources, will be the only ones to implement something like this. The rest will continue with using the hours spent physically in the office (whether it's in the cafeteria, on pointless "fun/team building activities" organized by HR, shopping on Amazon, in useless 'meetings', etc etc.) as the benchmark for "hard work".

As a couple of people have already pointed out, the attitude of a typical Indian manager and worker will prevent anything like this from really happening, barring a few really forward-thinking companies. Plus, speaking for most Indian IT companies (since it's the only industry I know anything about), the majority of them really don't need innovative or, dare I say, even exceptionally smart employees. Their ideal employee is just a certain type of individual who can work within a system. And those are a dime a dozen, so most companies really don't need to implement any further flexible policies like this to attract any better talent. Also must be said that working conditions in most IT orgs are already waaaay better than most other industries. From what I've seen, most IT employees seem to want that 'supervisory aspect' and being physically in the office and monitored to continue working productively.

Speaking for myself, I can easily complete my tasks in a 4-day week without any dip in productivity. Would be more than happy to stretch my working hours during the week to gain an additional day off. But there's no way I'm going to admit that to my company! And I certainly don't have much hope that something like this will happen in my career.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Govt plans to give employers the option of a 4-day work week

There is an implicit assumption in this concept that work is waiting and will wait(no SLA) in the queue to be completed, and it can be completed independently. Often the job description is "be available to customer when he/she calls". If the work requires constantly interacting with a customer who works 5 or 6 day week, what are you going to do? Customer raises an issue on Thursday night, he has to wait until Monday morning?

Very few companies can afford 4 day week, it is the easiest way to lose customers.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by Samurai

... Often the job description is "be available to customer when he/she calls". If the work requires constantly interacting with a customer who works 5 or 6 day week, what are you going to do? Customer raises an issue on Thursday night, he has to wait until Monday morning?

Same way how 24/7 operations are handled today: rotational shifts.

Very few people work 24/7 every single day, commitment to customer is they'll receive competent service when they need it, NOT that the exact same person will always answer the phone.

A 4-day workweek doesn't mean everyone works the same 4 days or gets the same 3 days off. I've worked the sort of on-call jobs you mentioned, and had weekdays for weekly offs while someone else was on-call.

There's obviously no one-size-fits-all solution, and plenty of support setups have what we call single-points-of-failure where one subject matter expert is always on the hook for escalations because the org never hired or created another, but that's another debate.

It won't work for everyone or every industry the same way, sure, but it's absurd to say it won't work at all.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by Samurai

There is an implicit assumption in this concept that work is waiting and will wait(no SLA) in the queue to be completed, and it can be completed independently. Often the job description is "be available to customer when he/she calls". If the work requires constantly interacting with a customer who works 5 or 6 day week, what are you going to do? Customer raises an issue on Thursday night, he has to wait until Monday morning?

Very few companies can afford 4 day week, it is the easiest way to lose customers.

Well it depends upon job to job. A bus driver cannot remote work. Does not mean remote work is not an option for others. Same here. For a non customer facing job, 4 day workweek is not an issue. For a customer facing job, 5 days can also be an issue if SLA is 24x7. And usually such support jobs are shift based.

[rrsteer]

An extreme view. I would propose a 4 day work week complemented with a lockdown type enforced one day off and then a regular off on the weekend.

[Eddy]

So do you guys want a Friday, Monday or Wednesday off?

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by Samurai

There is an implicit assumption in this concept that work is waiting and will wait(no SLA) in the queue to be completed, and it can be completed independently. Often the job description is "be available to customer when he/she calls". If the work requires constantly interacting with a customer who works 5 or 6 day week, what are you going to do? Customer raises an issue on Thursday night, he has to wait until Monday morning?

Very few companies can afford 4 day week, it is the easiest way to lose customers.

This is some EU-spec tripe being fed to us. It's nice when you have 100+ years of prosperity - often built on slave labour and colonialism - and you can afford to sit back and take three days off and have a month of paid leave a year. The reality is that if I - as a small Indian entrepreneur - must compete with an established western company, I need to be available and building and answering calls and emails 7 days a week. Hell, Mukesh Ambani still does it.

The reason China and S Korea (and previously Japan) rose so fast in productivity and economy is that they worked insane hours continuously for decades. China still does the 996 thing. I will get replies from the MD of a company at midnight IST on Sunday, which is very early morning in China. There is no substitute for that.

Having said that, Indian work patterns are inefficient. A typical western company will produce more in 6 hours than a regular Indian company will in 12. I guess it's down to the Protestant work ethic (controversial opinion) but I can't see other factors. We spend too much time on breaks - tea, smoke, gossip, whatever.

Also, stretching manufacturing shifts to 12 hours is not entirely feasible. If this goes through, the only beneficiaries will be government offices. They anyway barely work for five days of the week, now they'll do the same for four.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by Eddy

So do you guys want a Friday, Monday or Wednesday off?

To each their own.

Serious answer: My team had leave accrued from previous year (combination of hectic schedule and COVID meant no time-off used).

We worked a 4-day week for a couple months to utilize that time-off, as it would lapse otherwise at fiscal year-end.

We chose our extra off-day flexibly, so some chose long weekends while others chose mid-week breaks.

We started it as an experiment, knowing full well we'll stop the moment any adverse business impact looked likely, but we managed to get through it.

Neither our productivity nor our organization has collapsed, there's no impact on our CSAT scores, and we didn't have to borrow/hire more heads for cover. Before you say 'Oh, it's doable for large teams with headcount to spare', my current team is 5 people managing a critical function for a ~2000 headcount business unit, and tight SLAs.

It's doable, just needs some planning and flexibility, and most importantly, willingness to try something other than status quo. Credit to my boss.

[Kosfactor]

The airwaves are filled with content from certain countries that have several hundred years head start ahead of us. It is very hard to make sense of the reality of this country that we live in.

[ashokrajagopal]

A couple of points I wanted to put up, to widen the perspectives.


1) It would behoove everybody to read up on the dynamics behind the 8-hr workday.
On the one side, there were Labor movements, and on the other side there was none other than Henry Ford, pushing to pass an 8 hr day legislation.
Gist: Ford did large scale experiments with hours worked per day for his factories and empirically arrived that 8 hours workday is the most productive.
Yes, it has stood the test of time.

2) There are many alternative work schedules practiced at different places like 9-80 ( 9+9+9+9+8 -- first week(44 hours) & 9+9+9+9 -- second week(36 hours) ). These schedules are maintained primarily in MFG type industries because it costs a lot to run shopfloors. An hour more on 4 days is much less costly than a half day.

3) For the desk type work that most of the members in this forum do, it hardly makes a difference if one works a couple of hours extra. Plus, we are paid more.
It is not easy to ask a security personnel, a driver, or a housekeeping personnel to do 4 hours extra with a straight face.
(But hey, we just took away the Overtime related regulation last year)

4) If I am a retail establishment, a hotel, or a small time factory, I would like this kind of legislation. All said and done, it simply means I need 2 shifts instead of three for 24 hours. I just need to convert my temps to Full time employees and pay their PF.
So Medium enterprise owners must like this.

5) Everybody who knows anything about Indian cities know this -- no city in India, I repeat, no city in India is built on primary employment only.
Our cities are cities with employment opportunities because there are a lot of secondary and tertiary employment.

In any business district, there are 2X or 3X secondary level employment (cabs, restaurants, shops etc) generated.
Roughly, if the working population shifts to a 4 day week, it just means a whole lot of commercial activity lost for ever.
Just because you work a couple of hours extra, you wouldn't have an extra lunch.
That said, cinemas/malls get an extra day if there are 3 day weekends.

So, its an open question as to whether there will be net positive or negative effect on employment.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

... if the working population shifts to a 4 day week, it just means a whole lot of commercial activity lost for ever...

Care to elaborate further?

Wouldn't it just shift economic activity to other avenues (like you mentioned yourself)? E.g. A hotel helper doing it as a secondary night job to supplement his primary income, will have opportunities to do it, say, at a hotel outside an entertainment venue or another public gathering spot instead of a business establishment?

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

A couple of points I wanted to put up, to widen the perspectives. ...
So, its an open question as to whether there will be net positive or negative effect on employment.

Well said.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Care to elaborate further?

Wouldn't it just shift economic activity to other avenues (like you mentioned yourself)? E.g. A hotel helper doing it as a secondary night job to supplement his primary income, will have opportunities to do it, say, at a hotel outside an entertainment venue or another public gathering spot instead of a business establishment?

Your office tea guy/girl who comes by every day now has one day less of income. The darshini (your location is BLR) where most of your colleagues grab lunch is now one day's earnings poorer - that's 20%! This adds up across industries, across locations, across cities. It's the same reason taxi drivers had to resort to selling vegetables from their cars after the lockdown - no one was going to office so no one needed their services.

You are also assuming that hotel helpers are doing their job as a secondary job. Most aren't. Added to that is the fact that finding a new job, especially in a bad market, is very very difficult.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by v1p3r

...Your office tea guy/girl who comes by every day now has one day less of income. The darshini (your location is BLR) where most of your colleagues grab lunch is now one day's earnings poorer - that's 20%! This adds up across industries, across locations, across cities. It's the same reason taxi drivers had to resort to selling vegetables from their cars after the lockdown - no one was going to office so no one needed their services...

You misunderstood. Ashok was making a broader point that a smaller work week will kill some commercial activity forever.

I posit those activities would potentially shift elsewhere, where the consumers are, or potentially to entirely different segments altogether. One can't assume someone going to a specific workplace a day less is suddenly going to consume things worth a day less too. A chap smoking and drinking tea at the 'tapri' outside the office gates is probably going to do the same outside his residence, or maybe with friends instead. The business shifted to a different cigarette/tea vendor, it didn't vanish.

Of course it will impact specific individuals in different ways, that's not my argument at all. Same as not everyone gained (or lost) business during the last year. Some companies have more business than they know how to handle, while others have had to shut/scale down.

Some say labor and consumption will be destroyed, I suggest it may shift elsewhere, we don't have enough evidence to be sure.

Plenty of people just a year ago also said no business can survive a majority remote workforce. A year's worth of evidence now suggests otherwise, for some industries. There are still industries that can't (and never will) shift to that model, but 'it just won't work' isn't the broad sweeping generalization it used to be, just a year ago.

[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Wouldn't it just shift economic activity to other avenues (like you mentioned yourself)? E.g. A hotel helper doing it as a secondary night job to supplement his primary income, will have opportunities to do it, say, at a hotel outside an entertainment venue or another public gathering spot instead of a business establishment?

@v1p3r has explained it very well below.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

Well said.


Your office tea guy/girl who comes by every day now has one day less of income.
-----
Added to that is the fact that finding a new job, especially in a bad market, is very very difficult.

Basically, the idea that people easily shift from one job to another en masse is a model economists make in their minds, but that rarely happens.
The economic activity that happens around an Industrial/IT/Business area is not equal to the economic activity that happens around a shopping/entertainment area, although there exists some overlap.

An example, one can rationally assume Cinemas are never going back to their pre Pandemic normal again. Same is the case with Mid tier restaurants.

What goes away with a 4 day week is the 5th day, which was a "forced business day" and in that place we get a "voluntary leisure day". Its an open issue to see how things pan out.

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

You misunderstood. Ashok was making a broader point that a smaller work week will kill some commercial activity forever.

Let me clarify, I meant some percentage of commercial activity, not any activity in its entirety.

A meal supplier who runs an office cafeteria is a good example there.

The pandemic increased business for some businesses, and some others shut down. But generally, this has been an employment killer world over in terms of the number of people employed right?
Except for medical professionals, there is no new opportunity without taking away employment from another area is the reason govts world over are doing monetary support.

I just want to say labor is different from business in terms of the number of people employed.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

...
What goes away with a 4 day week is the 5th day, which was a "forced business day"..

Could say the same about the shift from 6 days to 5? How did it pan out then? Any recommendations on where I should look for info/stats?

To clarify, I only quoted the pandemic as an example of how a set mindset based on limited actual evidence doesn't stay consistent once evidence is available. That it was a net negative (in the immediate term) economically for the common man on the street is indisputable (notional value went up for a good chunk of entities, but that's besides the point).

I'm not suggesting a 4-day (or even a 3-day) workweek is feasible and beneficial, from an economic or a labor perspective, for all participants of an economy. That's rarely ever the case for any policy. I'm suggesting we shouldn't dismiss an idea without actual evidence.