I’m currently looking into compressing my hours into a four day week working 8 till 6. It feels like a positive move to me, but does anybody here have experience of actually doing this? What are the pros and cons? Which day did you choose to take off? Was there any unexpected downside?

19 comments

  1. I used to do some data centre work before being laid off and it was 4 days on, 4 days off. I loved it.

    The extra days off are well worth the longer hours. It also meant I travelled when it wasn’t rush hour and once you are at work you really don’t notice the extra hours.

  2. I do 36 hours over 4 days, Mon – Thurs. I also commute into an office / site so it’s pretty much 4 12 hour days in a row.

    I prefer it to the 5 day week. I don’t work in a job where WFH is practical most of the time, so I like saving 1 day of commute. It’s long and intensive Mon-Thurs, pretty much consisting of sleep, eat, work, prep for the next day, there’s little opportunity left to do much in the evenings. It puts more burden on my wife to deal with kids / household for those 4 days, but on Friday we spend the day together, I catch up on the housework and I can pick the kids up from school and spend some time with them.

  4. I do a 9 day fortnight, not working every other friday. I love it.

    Would like to go to 4 day week but doubt I’d be allowed to go that far.

    There are no cons.

  5. I did it for a while and it kinda sucked tbh.

    I did 9-6 Monday to Thursday and 9-1 Friday, and 8-6 Monday to Thursday at different times.

    The first felt like Friday morning was a waste of time, but at least Friday afternoon off was nice.

    The second just really sucked for 4 straight days just for me to have a lie-in on Friday. Everyone else is in work, so it’s not as if you can do a whole lot.

  6. I did 4 days compressed a few years ago and overall I loved it, but you need to work out how you’ll deal with making up for time off if you ever have to cut a day short.

    For me I had to average 9:15 each day, but if I had to finish 90 minutes early for some reason that’d then need two 10 hour days to get back to even. I found that difficult and eventually went back to a normal working pattern. Though thinking about it now I’d probably have been better off taking some half days and setting aside a few of them in expectation of this situation. But that is only likely to work if your workplace is happy with short notice leave.

    I’ve now gone to 9 days in 10 as I only need to average just under 8:15 a day, so I aim to do 8:30 a day to naturally build in that little bit extra flexi to allow for shorter days as and when needed.

    EDIT: 4 days is great though if you can make it work. I had every Wednesday off so it broke up the week nicely, meant I only ever worked 2 days in a row, stopped it from just blending into the weekend which gave me a little push to do something with each of the days, and also made it easier to get approved as most people go for Friday or Monday.

  7. I do a 4.5 day week so finish at 11:30 on Fridays.

    Our holiday is in hours so taking a long weekend is a really good use of holiday time off. By the time you’ve logged on, done some emails, timesheet, but if admin etc. It’s time to finish for the day

  8. It depends whether you can actually be productive for those extra hours?

  9. I love it!

    I do a 35 hour week over 4 days, my partner does a 37.5 hour week over 4 days. We both only have to be in the office routinely 1 day a week so it really fits with WFH and adhoc in person meetings that occasionally pop up.

    We are both really protective of our non-working day, we don’t look at work stuff etc and both our work places are respectful of it. Although it helps that we work in the public sector where flexible working, part time and compressed hours aren’t unusual. I have my hours in my signature and have an auto response that I put on each week when my working week has finished

    We do it for childcare reasons – our non working day (either a Friday or a Monday) is a day of looking after the kid. We both love it to the point where we hope to still keep it when kids are in school.

    I find I’m much more productive in work and I like the hour/half an hour when I have no colleagues ‘in’ so I can do quiet work then or the busy work I use to leave to late Friday afternoon when I was 5 days

  10. Love it. I work 35-39 hours in 3.5 days. The amount of free time and activities you can do because of it is insane. You have no clue how much you are missing of life until you have all that time back.

  11. I do a 9 day fortnight with a day off every other week (the day varies – I’m off today for instance. My manager’s pretty flexible and if I want my day off on a specific day so I don’t have to use a holiday for it then she’ll normally accommodate which is handy.

    I love it. I’m not the kind of person who’d be tempted to log in on their day off – my laptop and work phone remain switched off on those days, so for me a whole day off is far more relaxing than having an extra 45 mins or so free of an evening.

  12. Do a 4 day week, 7:30 to 5:30 with a 30 min lunch break. Mon/Tue on the office and we/Thu at home with Friday off.

    It’s great, spend the Friday with my daughter. Some days can be a slog if they are busy but that can be the case too before.

  13. As someone else said, it can be tricky if you ever need to make hours up. I ended up dropping half a day, then compressing 4.5 days into 4. That was a little more affordable than dropping a whole day but a little more flexible than compressing 5 days into 4. I have Wednesdays off. I love not working more than two days in a row, and booking off the Tuesday after a bank holiday Monday for a five day weekend.

  14. My most common shift pattern is 15 hours, plus overnight, plus 15 hours. Then 2, maybe 3 days off. You get a decent amount of days off throughout the month, but 15 hour shifts back to back, including sleep shifts can be exhausting. Personally, I can just about manage it, not everyone at work can so they opt for shorter work days and less days off.

  15. My wife does this currently – 07:00 to 17:00.

    She loves it – she has Wednesday off every week which she spends with her mum, so she cuts her week in to two parts of two days.

    Personally, I’d have Fridays off and opt for the longer weekend, but that’s just me.

  16. I work 45 hours a week over 4 days but across the full week so I get random days off

  17. My job isn’t normal by any means but I work 72 hour shifts then have 4 days off. The work life balance is so much better than other jobs I’ve had, wouldn’t go back to working normal jobs if I didn’t have to.

  18. My wife did it for a bit and found it too exhausting. It sounds great, but overall she found the 3 day weekend didn’t make up for the intensity of 4x 10 hour days in a row.

  19. Its offered at my job but the day off rotates, you can’t pick it. People who do it love it, every month or so they get the Friday and also the following Monday off.
    Me, it would drive me bananas having a different day off each week. I like routine 🙂

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