matthearn.com

Ooh, I like the sound of this: companies and municipal governments have been exploring the idea of the 4 day, 40-hour workweek.

Local governments in particular have had their eyes on Utah over the last year; the state redefined the workday for more than 17,000 of its employees last August. For those workplaces, there’s no longer a need to turn on the lights, elevators or computers on Fridays—nor do janitors need to clean vacant buildings. Electric bills have dropped even further during the summer, thanks to less air-conditioning: Friday’s midday hours have been replaced by cooler mornings and evenings on Monday through Thursday. As of May, the state had saved $1.8 million.

Perhaps as important, workers seem all too ready to replace “TGIF” with “TGIT”. “People just love it,” says Lori Wadsworth, a professor of public management at Brigham Young University in Provo. She helped survey those on the new Working 4 Utah schedule this May and found 82 percent would prefer to stick with it.

I would absolutely be in favor of something like this where I work. I’ve long been half-jealous of the 24-hour operations teams, who work 12-hour days, but only work 3 or 4 days a week. I would consider taking a job that did that, except you end up working either Saturdays or Sundays all the time, plus holidays if they fall on your shift. If I could show up at 7 and leave at 6, taking an hour for lunch, from Monday to Thursday, I’d be pretty excited for all the extra sleeping in I could do if I didn’t have children.