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November 11, 2024 - 7:00am
One theory for the bumpy first few months of Britain’s new government is that it is frontloading the unpopular and difficult parts of its policy agenda. Meanwhile, according to this theory, Keir Starmer’s Labour is planning — or hoping — that healthy economic growth and the effectiveness of its reforms will deliver more popularity towards the end of the party’s term. I’m not sure I buy this, but I can see why people have latched on to it.
It’s hard to understand otherwise why Government ministers would allow it to be known that they are throwing their weight behind further local authority experiments with a four-day working week. The appearance, at least, is that Government organisations and their workers are being cosseted and protected from difficult economic headwinds, in a way that the private sector is not. This impression is heightened by the generous pay settlements awarded to various groups since July, notably Tube drivers, nurses and junior doctors.
Some of these pay deals are reasonable on merit, but nevertheless a hard sell in the current climate. By some measures, public-sector productivity has been flat for the better part of 20 years; hardly anyone disputes that it has seen minimal improvement since Covid-19, which will soon be half a decade ago.
It is true that many private-sector employers have also experimented with shorter working weeks or unusual working patterns, perhaps making a virtue of necessity in the post-pandemic landscape, when the expectation of remote and flexible working has become routine for those operating in the knowledge economy. A few firms have tried an “unlimited annual leave” approach, in which employees are given a huge amount of leeway around when they work, as long as they meet targets and deliver specific projects. There are probably gains to be made and lessons to be learnt from that kind of innovation, especially in fields that rely on highly specialised work from a relatively small number of qualified individuals.
However, the fundamental fact remains that, in the private sector, those experiments are always subject to market discipline, and so it is much harder to dodge the question of whether they genuinely lead to more effective working. If Amalgamated Widgets Plc. finds that a four-day week means 10,000 widgets being produced every month rather than 9,000, then it is highly likely that the practice does have genuine benefits for the company.
This calculation is harder to make clearly in the public sector, though. A recent pilot in Cambridgeshire did find that a four day-week either improved or did not affect productivity across many areas of the council’s work. But important questions remain about the reproducibility of that research in other parts of the country, and whether it is genuinely possible to apply rigorous productivity measures to local authority work in the same way we might with a private company. Purely as a political question, the average taxpayer might take some persuading that there are no negative consequences to public servants receiving a three-day weekend, every weekend.
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SubscribeI work 12hour shifts in a hospital. Majority of nursing colleagues do too. Hence you do a 3 day week with every 4th wk a 4th day. As a result there are less shift handovers to manage – 2 rather than 3 per day – and continuity of care is hence better.
It’s also slightly cheaper. Plus means staff who want to can more easily work voluntary extra shifts, and most health care providers are short staffed so welcome this. Carparking is easily for those who drive. And it probably helps with things like less road congestion etc etc.
There are some downsides – people get tired towards end of a 12hr shift so you have to make sure colleagues have taken their breaks during that shift – not always straightforward if you were short staffed in the first place.
Nonetheless just one example of why this whole debate a bit silly. My understanding is the choice is being given to LAs and they can make appropriate decisions with their staff weighting various factors. If you think all public officials are nefarious abusers of position then this sort of story will be seen in a certain way. If you are a bit more thoughtful it’ll make sense the option is left open.
‘If you think that all public officials are nefarious abusers of position….” Wrong reaction!
I have worked all my life as a manager, mostly a Production Manager over a workforce of hundreds of people. In every group of people, 90% (say) work very hard, help each other, work as a team, cover each other if someone isn’t well. The 10% (say) take all of my effort. They hate every job, they try to hide as much as possible, they make mistakes and don’t report them (making the mistakes increase in importance), work the maximum sick leave, always complain to the unions about trivial things. These are the people who will get the most from a 4-day week – the people who need constant supervision.
Just tie it to performance. It’s not that hard if you do it well. And for many jobs, including many LA jobs, they already work shift patterns that don’t fit into classic M-F 9-5pm.
I suspect there is some real estate release that may also come out of the trend, if done well. Less desk space needed etc. And reducing turnover and creating greater workforce stability can have financial and performance benefits. With an aging workforce enabling some folks to work longer through enhanced flexibility probably going to be essential – unless you prefer more immigrants perhaps?
It’s all about it being well managed.
You work 12 hour shifts in a hospital? A couple of weeks ago you were a retired naval officer.
He’s allowed to identify as whatever he wants to be and we have no right to question him. (That’s irony for those who don’t do irony)
Maybe its a hospital ship?
Funnily enough I did work on one and it was where the thought on what I’d do when I left the Mob first formulated.
Wasn’t an officer, and pretty sure never gave that impression. 22 years. Had to retrain and good ‘resettlement’ packages with RN. Had developed some skills in RN that then helped me with new career.
To be fair I now work p/t as in my 7th decade, but the shifts are 12hrs.
Good grief. A 4 day week. Really?!
This government is beyond clueless. It’s almost like no one in the cabinet has ever run a business!
Just look at the roads as an example. Actually look at them. Here in Hertfordshire they’re literally falling apart. And no one is out fixing them. They are bizarre relaying the historic high street in one market town while the A41 falls apart. Who makes that decision?! Some cretin working from home probably. The same cretin that never uses the A41.
The public sector is a joke. With fictitious messaging around pay not being great. Really?! I’ve seen some of the salaries. And for the talent of the individuals receiving them they’re being overpaid. Massively.
Exactly – they just don’t understand. As an aside, last month my local County Council had a full meeting. People travelled to the meeting, on expenses of course, were ready to start and then …. the secretary didn’t turn up. So, they had to cancel the meeting and go home again because there was no-one to take the minutes. Maybe there was a rule, maybe there was some other difficulty but the point is – they couldn’t run a business, as you say.
I find it hard to believe that a full county council meeting would be dependant on the presence of a single “secretary”. A parish council employing just one part time clerk might sometimes have a problem but not a county council with a large Democratic Services team. Meetings of my County Council are attended by several such officers, as well as the Chief Executive and all the senior management team.
If public sector workers can get their week’s work done in four days then the obvious thing to do is sack 20% of the workforce.
Snap! posted the same before reading any comments. Apols.
Great minds …
Or give them more work since they’re clearly not ding enough in the first place.
Some years ago a Borough Council I had just become a member of agreed to the Chief Executive dropping his hours from 5 to 4 days. When I questioned why he had previously been paid for 5 days if his job could actually be done in 4 the response of a long serving fellow councillor was that “he is a very nice and helpful officer”.
I think you will find that a great many council workers are not overpaid with a lot of posts in generally lower paid occupations. There are recruitment issues if you glance at many council websites. What a key advantage of working in a council is that the pensions are significantly better than many comparable jobs in the private sector. A trade off in my opinion if you value getting your bin picked up or eating your school dinner. The move to a 4 day week really cant happen until you also change school timetables to also go to a 4 day school week. That is another debate altogether!
The largest weakness of the 4 day trials is that participants are likely to work harder during the trial until their 4 day goal is achieved – then they will revert to previous effort levels. These tests are fundamentally flawed, and should be ignored by any intelligent/objective person.
In that case the best course of action might be to retain the temporary character of the change (i.e. annual renewal conditional on performance targets being met) until it has fully become habit.
It’s been 50 years or more since I read the study that showed a productivity spurt after a change, with return to previous levels in a short time. Changing back to the previous system resulted a similar spurt and decline.
I can tell you now that the recent pilot in South Cambridgeshire proved nothing of the sort. The report claimed that there were some marginal benefits. But this reported only on a set of carefully picked criteria (incomplete) and failed to measure the full picture. It also neglected the fact that the four day week in South Cambs allows staff to do other work in the freed up day, which would of course offset any claimed work/life balance gains (quite apart from potential conflicts of interest).
More importantly, at no point was a vote taken on the South Cambs Council to approve continuation of this scheme. Our elected councillors are not even allowed to vote on it.
It’s a sham and a fraud.
Let me try to understand this. The new govt is already deeply unpopular, it just approved a budget with massive tax and spending increases, and now it floats the idea of a four-day work week. It’s almost like they don’t care for, or even attempt to understand, the people who voted for them. Read the frickin room folks.
They’re just rewarding their public sector voter base and the big health and education Unions.
To the extent that they understand or care about the private sector at all, they are very far down the list of priorities.
Why is it that any time you attend a meeting with public sector client there are a couple of monstrously fat people who eat all the Whatnots and say nothing at all? It’s bizarre.
It will be something to do with “diversity and inclusion “no doubt.
Even taken at face value those conclusions could be read two ways. Its equally likely that the reason a 4 day week did not impact productivity is because they are not doing more than 4 days worth of work anyway.
I speak from experience having worked a decade in NHS and local government. I can’t tell you the number of pointless meetings I sat through where significant numbers of participants didn’t actually know why they were there. The number of reports written which at most got a perfunctory nod through, probably unread but the majority of parties. The number of hours wasted on ridiculous training and awareness type activities.
But perhaps the most ironic waste of time of all is how long people in local government spend simply telling each other how busy they are.
(A quick note here regarding certain classes of staff delivering “coal face” services, such as nurses and practicing childrens social workers. These groups typically work shifts dictated by the demand to be on call at all times. They are often overwhelmed with cases through no fault of their own. I do not include them in the above analysis.)
But all such questions are pretty much irrelevant. This is simply a handout to Labour’s public sector client base in return for their continued support. No matter what such “pilots” show, Labour will try to force this through as soon as they think they can get away with it.
Socialism in action, and i can vouch for your points regarding non-frontline staff in the NHS.
Working their way towards a 3-day week perhaps? Living outside the UK for the past year I expected my confirmation biases to ease away from the maelstrom. But.Labour are “triggering” childhood memories Right, Centre, and mostly Left.
I listen to these suggestions by the Government and various unions about a four day week with complete bemusement. If the number of employees is such that the output can be achieved by just working 4 days a week, then simply get rid of 20% of the employees. The private sector has been doing this for years, it’s called automation, productivity improvement and overhead cost reduction. Crack on.
Hardly. In an age of QE where trillions of central bank liquidity flow into stocks and credit is traded at interest rates well below market value for big capital.. Many of them can ignore market forces quite a bit. Nevertheless, it has probably always been true that, in the service sector, hours spent in the office do not equal productivity.
We should also consider the possibility that there is a mismatch between the work people are doing and the work that actually has to be done. And that such a mismatch gets exacerbated when loose monetary policy enables widespread rent seeking.
“A recent pilot in Cambridgeshire did find that a four day-week either improved or did not affect productivity across many areas of the council’s work.
And the results weren’t fixed at all.
If you are lucky enough to fins an honest public sector worker they will tell you how flexi-time is systematically abused.
If you catch a doctor in an unguarded moment they will tell you the nurses are mostly lazy and useless
And the minority of really decent nurses are massively overworked mainly because the others don’t carry their weight.
And there is a lot of weight to carry in certain cases.
The problem with the front loading theory is that nobody knows what else is going to happen during this governments term of office. Trade wars? Increasing interest rates due to enforced extra defence spending due to pressure from Trump? Global war? All of the above?
Machiavelli in The Prince said do the rough stuff first and then you can be popular for your sweetness later. Does anything basic ever change?
Set low targets; achieve less. Use tick boxes to measure effectiveness; achieve lower quality. Put time into guarding your own job; achieve an empty career. Criticise anyone who criticises; achieve underdevelopment. Or, to sum up, behave like the civil service and almost any other monopoly.
A four day working week is equivalent to one week off in five. So it’s essentially an additional ten weeks of holiday a year…
Many of the Government’s policies are inflationary. Trump’s tariffs will reinforce that tendency. Barring a financial meltdown, the cyclical average for interest rates will trend higher. That will mean substantially lower house prices or perhaps stable house prices while immigration increases the population by another 5 million and even banks going insolvent. Is one of these scenarios what Red Keir is planning?
Genuine question, why shouldn’t we be on 4 day weeks by now?
Productivity today is around 1/3 higher than it was 30 years ago (according to the ONS), therefore if capitalism is working as it’s supposed to then we should be able to be working less hours without any drop in the standard of living. However we all know that isn’t the case
According to the ONS public sector productivity has risen 0.2% per year between 1997 and 2019. That is roughly 4.29% over 22 years (using a compound interest calculator). Nowhere near a third.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/ukproductivityintroduction/apriltojune2023#:~:text=In%20Quarter%202%20(Apr%20to%20June)%202023%2C%20output%20per,than%20hours%20worked%2C%200.3%25.
I was referring to overall productivity rather than simply the public sector.
Many public sector roles can’t be made more productive though. Unless you’re going to have class sizes of 50, 2 nurses looking after an entire hospital or 1 police officer per city many simply can’t be made more productive in the same way as some roles in the private sector can be automated.
Most public sectors could be made more efficient. Even in public facing roles it is not only a matter of ratios but also of ways of working and systems design. I have a very small experience of improving efficiency in the health service. During an upgrade of an A&E Department of which I was Director many, many years ago, I took the chance, with the help of an innovation department of the Scottish Government , to redesign both the layout of the A&E (which cost a significant amount of money) and changing the way of working (which didn’t cost anything). We managed to improve our targets (something in the order of meeting 96% of Tony Blair’s 4 hour completion of treatment target whereas previously we were about 80%. We can only dream about such figures now says I who presented to a local A&E a couple of years ago with chest pain and it took four hours to be seen by a doctor!). There was no increase in staff.
I know this is anecdotal (although the work we did for the Scottish NHS was incorporated into NHS Scotlsnd policy) and small beer but I do believe that continual efficiency improvement could be made part of public service ethos given governmental will. Unfortunately, Public Service Unions are powerful and resistent to change, and none more so than the BMA which I never joined.
I’m always amused at the number of times private as well as public enterprises implement business plans that are only ever about cutting costs. Symbolic of either not having real work (“bulls@hit jobs”) or no ideas for growth. No one ever cut their way to greatness. Monopolies seem to do this best.