Would you take fewer vacation days in favor of a 4 day week?
Catherine Norris
119 replies
I love having 28 days of vacation in Germany--but I think I might trade a few of them to have a 4 day work week! What would you prefer?
Replies
Dlazzy@dlazzy
4 days week should not be mandatory.
A trial need to be done before to fit all minds.
Problem with 4 days week is that in 30 years we will think 4 days week is too long and then go for a 3 days week and then working for 14 hours a day.
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The idea that we need 40 hours at all when reshaping our personal commitment to our employer for time is arbitrary. Originally (for the sake of population growth & mechanization), it was suggested that by shortening the work week to 4 from 5 days, we'd have a better system. But, I think working 32 instead of 40 hours over 4 days is more than enough for most people in a work week. And, if we fall behind, the present-day guilt and family displacement would be trivial as we work an extra hour or two (like we already do on occasion) on a day where we fall behind or have last-minute work.
Product Hunt
I'd keep vacation time, mainly because I'm particular when I use it. I used to work a 4 day week actually, it's success depends heavily on expectations regarding work load from leadership
@aaronoleary Very good point! Let's say that we're expected to maintain our same productivity levels--would that be too much? I'm still convinced that we wouldn't necessarily be less productive...but it would mean we'd need to cut down on time spent in meetings, etc.
@aaronoleary @catherine_norris I think it's always worth putting into perspective. Even if the team is not executing as much work as before in direct comparison, it's worth looking at other side and long term effects.
You're probably less likely to burn out or take sick leave when you're working a day less. When I worked 4 days for a while with Wednesday being the extra day off, I found myself a lot more organised, because I started breaking my work down into 2-day milestones rather than big 5-day chunks. Etc
@aaronoleary @jburr90 that's a great way of looking at it!
Degen Trends
I prefer 3-day trips anyway, so this is right up my alley
I would not trade any of the vacation days, what I would trade is 10h / day for 4 days a week :)
@vfdraganescu Oh interesting! To be fair--many of us are already working 10h days π
We need more recovery time to stay productive and prevent burnout
As a Sales Executive nowadays you are always working, so it doesn't matter!
Hmmm, 4 day week is something new. I would try it.
Longer vacations against 2 days off are what I will prefer!
@excellentweb_australia just curious--what's the standard amount of vacation days you get where you're from? I'm wondering if people's answers change depending on how much vacation they're offered!
CenterMe
Seems that regular recovery helps to prevent burnout better than 1-2 vacations a year. So my choice is 4-day work week :)
But I am kind of workaholic and can't imagine this thing))
Brandwise
I think my ideal setup is 4 days week can be scheduled for meetings. The rest of the 3 days can be used for recovery or catching up on work. If work is slow, take 3 days off, if it's crunch time, use those days to get ahead. -- My bias is I enjoy what I do and often find myself getting a head on a Sunday morning.
@jackgisel1 Everyone works differently! Flexible working options should become the norm
Instead of giving up on vacation days (as we have 14 in Turkey), I'd prefer to increase my daily hours and get a 4-day work week in return.
4 day work week
I think the future is in the four day week or some kind of flexible work
If you have 25 days of holiday on a 5-day work week job, that equals 5 full weeks off. I would be OK if I moved to a 4-day work week with 20 days of holiday, as those would still equate to 5 full weeks off.
@alessandro_valentini yes, me too! that sounds perfect π
52 vacation days! Then you can choose to turn them into a four day work week π
I will do that any-day! Frequent short term happiness >> one long term pleasure. Short term happiness do compound a period of time and gives you better health, mental state and efficiency in work!
Collato
Great question. And hard choice....
@ivo_scherkamp Definitely tough! Would be cool if you could choose to have a four-day work week for only part of the year, so you can keep most of your days! Long summer weekends π
Substor
Do I get WFH?
More vacation days. I'd rather take larger, gapped adventures that I can look forward to than be distracted throughout the week for my long weekend.
I work at a company that has a four-day work week AND unlimited vacation. I find as a result people tend to take fewer vacations naturally since they don't get burned out as easily and weekends actually offer you time to relax and regenerate.
@tomaswilliamsa That sounds awesome! I'm still not sure how I feel about unlimited vacation; it's kind of a double-edged sword. I feel like it leads to people actually taking LESS vacation time, and then they're not properly compensated for the days they didn't take. But--it depends entirely on the company
@tomaswilliamsa @catherine_norris I think it does 100% depend on the company and the team. I worked at a start-up where we changed to unlimited holidays by the founder but it wasn't exactly encouraged and then we as a team decided not to do a race to the bottom in terms of taking less and agreed we would all support each other in taking holidays and that worked. I think we still averaged the 5 weeks a year approx and maybe the odd day here and there.
@tomaswilliamsa @joanne_hurleyv1 that sounds healthy!
@catherine_norris we have a minimum required vacation of four weeks a year that people are required to take. And by law a person is entitled to two so even if someone took none, they'd be compensated for two.