Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by michaelt on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @11:59AM (#19200422)

  The entire point is that the
  employer doesn't care how many
  days off people take each year.

Of course they do. Just they call it "abusing the policy" or "not getting your work done" and don't tell you what the lines you shouldn't cross are.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by jlarocco on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @01:58PM (#19201708)

> Of course they do. Just they call it "abusing the policy" or "not getting your work done" and don't tell you what the lines you shouldn't cross are.

I don't know how many times I need to repeat this, but if your company doesn't communicate expectation it's a problem with the company, not with unlimited PTO policies in general.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by bluntfang on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @05:09PM (#19203357)

If there's a trend that's affecting the industry as whole, and if most places are abusing that trend, then it's worth looking at the trend to see what's going not. It's not very helpful to say what you're saying when statistics speak otherwise. It's very lazy to say "it's an implementation problem" and is not giving the question enough thought.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by jlarocco on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @05:20PM (#19203457)

So where are these statistics? All I've seen in this thread, and others on the topic, are anecdotes. If people are going to complain about how it didn't work for them then it's only fair to mention how well it worked for the company I was at.

I also disagree that my comments haven't been helpful. There's a difference between the concept of "unlimited PTO" and any particular implementation of it, and it's important to know where a problem is coming from. Perhaps there should be regulations around it, but getting rid of it entirely, as suggested elsewhere in this thread, isn't the answer.

We wouldn't ban all cars because one brand is unsafe, so let's not get rid of all unlimited PTO policies just because some companies do it wrong.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by bluntfang on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @07:56AM (#19207449)

>All I've seen in this thread, and others on the topic, are anecdotes.

Great observation! Statistically, there are more anecdotes in this thread with employees with negative experiences with good ones. I think that's a great starting point.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @07:59AM (#19207466)

And, as usual with self-reporting, accept that folks with experiences on the extreme are more likely to be motivated to speak up.

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Re:Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut ... by Aeolun on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @07:54PM (#19204624)

I don’t know about you, but any time off (even when unlimited) is still subject to approval by my manager.

If I take one day off 30 times a year nobody raises an eyebrow, but if I take 30 days off in one go it might.

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