| "Unit of work performed" is one of those concepts that sounds great in business books or when dealing with repetitive mass-production tasks, but doesn't translate well to creative work like software development or engineering. From the management side, it's common for teams to get into routines where Fridays are basically lost. It starts with getting into the habit of leaving a little bit early on Fridays. Then people realize that they only have a few hours between lunch and leaving early, so they start checking out right after lunch. Then people realize that if they get in after 9AM on Friday, they don't have many hours to get anything done before lunch, so they don't want to get started on anything that requires focus. Eventually, Fridays are a short, laid-back day at the office where they catch up on stray e-mails before going home. For those teams, going to a 4x8 workweek has no productivity drop because they weren't doing much on Friday anyway. However, for teams that actually get things done on Friday, going to 4x8 or even 4x10 can start to decrease productivity. Productivity and hours spent working aren't the only things that matter, though. Going to a 4-day workweek is an easy way to keep employees happy, which is valuable in itself. Also keep in mind that we aren't great at judging our own productivity. We tend to perceive percentage of busy time as productivity, and a 4-day workweek will naturally have a higher percentage of time occupied by work than a 5-day workweek. This increase in percentage of busy time can mislead people into thinking they're being even more productive on more time-compressed schedules, even if they're putting out less work on an absolute scale. Frankly, a lot of companies switch to 4-day workweeks because they can get 80-90% of the productivity while offering employees a perk they can't usually get at big companies that pay higher salaries. |