
Microsoft Japan’s 4-day workweek experiment sees productivity jump 40% - known
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/04/microsoft-japan-4-day-work-week-experiment-sees-productivity-jump-40percent.html
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merricksb
Heavily discussed twice at time of announcement nearly 2 months ago (note this
article is from early Nov):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433710)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21441689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21441689)

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Tharkun
Maybe the headline should reflect this gem:

> That boon was thanks in part, Microsoft said, to meetings capped at 30
> minutes and an increase in remote conferences.

From my past experiences in megacorps, there are so many meetings it sometimes
feels like that's all you're doing.

~~~
cosmodisk
Unless it's some sort of C level meeting with tje board on quarterly basis, I
seen no reason why any internal meeting should be more than half an hour long.

~~~
Tharkun
I agree. Sadly not every manager got that memo.

My brief time at $megacorp taught me to recognize when a meeting turns into
unproductive bullshitting, at which point I just walk away and go back to
work. YMMV.

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altmind
From what I've heard from the previous reporting, they were tracking the
performance by the sales revenue by employee. The sales numbers for MSFT are
mostly recurring revenue, and the +40% productivity jump may be a result of
seasons in their subscription renewals.

~~~
AznHisoka
The 40% figure definitely needs more context. What was the average increase in
sales the prior 6 months? And did it decrease back to normal after the
experiment was over?

And a single month of sales increase might be due to timing in sales cycles.
Maybe the prior month there was a lot more overtime than usual, and there were
a lot more leads this month, and prospects further in the sales cycle.

I am all for a 4 day work week but this experiment is lacking a bit.

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tomerbd
If I was in that experiment I would work harder during that 80% just to prove
that 80% time is more productive.

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tompic823
> Meanwhile, the firm saw a fall in costs, with 23.1% less electricity used
> and 58.7% fewer pages printed over the period.

The 23.1% figure makes intuitive sense; the 58.7% figure seems astronomical.
Why would employees being out 1/5 days lead to fewer than half the number of
pages being printed?

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radicalbyte
They're probably being forced into using email more because people will not
all have the same free day so handing printed memo's and attached documents
doesn't really work.

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Zenst
That does make sense and the only comparison I'm aware of would be a remote
worker who you are just not going to start sending printed pages or faxes etc
compared to digital forms, and in those case will often see closer to 100%
reduction (alas some things need physical signatures).

~~~
radicalbyte
I'm speaking from experience in UK/Sweden vs what I see in The Netherlands.

In some of the large organizations I've worked at it was the culture to
distribute anything "official" \- draft documents, meeting notes,
presentations for meetings etc - in printed forms to a surprisingly large
number of people.

Since I moved to mainland Europe - where a four-day working week is very much
the norm for people with kids in high skill jobs - I have yet to encounter
this practice.

Technology might also be playing a roll here, but large organizations have
this tendency to fight any kind of change tooth and nail, it only seems to
happen when it is forced.

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DanBC
Did they check for the Hawthorne Effect?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

Almost any change you make when combined with extra observation will increase
productivity for a short time.

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john_minsk
MSFT won't adopt it even in this office alone, not talking about the worldwide
offices...nuff said

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ghusbands
It certainly would be nice to see things move on from a standard established
at a car manufacturer nearly a hundred years ago. However, it's a well-known
result that almost every study of a change in an office finds an increase in
productivity. Essentially, it's believed that any change temporarily increases
motivation. (I can't find citations right now, sorry.)

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Nokinside
Medium size and big companies have workplace rules and policies directed to
managing the worst 10 - 20 percent of the workforce. They apply to everyone
because you must be fair.

Surprising number of people just need more rest (mental health is big issue)
and start thriving when you cut their hours.

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trhway
some good/top places at Silicon Valley make one day, Wednesday typically, a
WFH and that is pretty close to 4-day week and may be even better as it allows
to experience the "collaborative" environment of modern office plan in bite-
size 2-day chunks instead of tiresome 4 days in a row thus being much more
easier and less stressful which almost directly translates into productivity.

~~~
Fire-Dragon-DoL
Working from home is not really "close to not working", that's really bad to
say for all remote workers

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galkk
of course, because they're now working 44 hours per week, instead of 55

/obligatory joke about perceived "salaryman's" work hours in Japan

~~~
cltsang
For real, is the circumstance really like this even for foreign companies in
Japan?

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Apocryphon
Hey, Silicon Valley techno-utopian startups always trying to think different
when it comes to new wacky incentives to lure in talent: why not consider
adopting this?

At the very least, could it be feasible in a small organization to stagger it
so that some people work M-Th, and the others T-F, so there's partial coverage
for all days of the week?

~~~
manigandham
It's highly dependent on the actual work and the productivity claims here are
unclear. There's plenty of evidence that truly creative/productive time per
day is limited and that more but shorter days might be a better trade off then
fewer long days. Then again it all gets muddied when full-time hours aren't
actually tracked and certain cultures like Japan where excessive overtime is
normal.

~~~
chriswwweb
We looked at both solutions, shorter days of lets say 6 hours or less days.
For me personally fewer days is better, because I have a pretty long ride to
work, so working a day less also removes two long travels.

Also in my opinion no solution reducing the amount of working hours should
have disadvantages over the conventional 5 days / 40 hours weeks, or there
will be no produtivity / motivation gain. So just saying we still work 40
hours but do this on 4 days a week is obviously bad. Also working 32 hours and
being paid less is bad and so on...

Something else that had a huge impact for me, is that our working hours are
much more flexible now. We have four so called "core hours" from 10 in the
morning to 15 in the afternoon where everyone has to be in the office, the
rest is flexible. So you are allowed to work 7 hours one day and 9 the next
day. Also you can include two one hour pauses as long as the minimum amount
per week is not lower than 32 hours. For me this is great because it allows me
to drive to work and from work when the traffic on the streets is much lower
than at peak times where all the other workers commute.

