Samsung to give staff Friday off once a month in latest embrace of 4-day work week

[tonyget]

Samsung to give staff Friday off once a month in latest embrace of 4-day work week

Beginning next week, full-time staffers in the company’s corporate offices in South Korea will be able to take the Friday off, according to Bloomberg.

nypost.com

Samsung will give its employees Friday off once a month as the South Korean chipmaker joins other companies in embracing the four-day work week, according to reports.

Beginning next week, full-time staffers in the company’s corporate offices in South Korea will be able to take the Friday off on the week they receive paychecks, Bloomberg News reported.

Samsung’s move comes in the wake of local rival SK Hynix Inc’s new policy of allowing workers who log more than 40 hours per week to take one Friday off each month.

Samsung employs 268,000 workers worldwide — half of whom are based in South Korea.

South Korean employees are some of the most overworked in the world, according to statistics.

Local companies such as Kakao Corp. have given employees more flexibility in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where remote work allowed for greater balance between career and personal lives.

In 2022, dozens of UK-based companies adopted a four-day schedule as part of a half-year-long pilot program.

Revenue at the participating firms jumped by 35% during the six-month trials compared to the same period one year earlier, data from the study showed.

The companies also noted upticks in hiring and decreases in employee absences and turnover.

Employees at participating firms also reported major improvements to their well-being — with 71% noting a decrease in feelings of burnout, 39% saying they felt less stressed than before the trial and 40% indicating a decrease in difficulty sleeping.

 

[blueone]

That's amazing. Samsung? If this was April 1st I would have thought it was a joke.

 

[nghanayem]

Congratulations any Samsung folks reading this (assuming it is true)! You guys work so hard and deserve some reprieve! As for any of the fab engineers and techs at Samsung, hopefully you guys get a similar deal more suited to our working reality, as you guys also work really hard.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

I wonder if that really means work at home on Friday? Either way it's progress! TSMC should follow, absolutely. How much would it really change the bottom line?

 

[tooLongInEDA]

I wonder if that really means work at home on Friday? Either way it's progress! TSMC should follow, absolutely. How much would it really change the bottom line?

But is it progress ? My local UK council is now doing this 4 day work week stuff and making similar claims. Their customers are not convinced ! Their work backlog certainly hasn't declined.

The 4 day a week fashion raises several questions which no one has ever answered to my satisfaction:

1) If you can do in 4 days what you did last week in 5, have HR (or their consultants) determined exactly where the extra day was being wasted ? Surely, this is one of the first things you'd want to know and learn from. There seems to be no data or research on this.

2) If 4 is better than 5, why stop there ? Why not 3 ? Or 2 ? Or is 4 the magic sweet spot for reasons which are not explained ? Perhaps it's 4.5 for Tom. 4.0 for Dick and 3.5 for Harry.

3) How do we know that people won't spend the extra day doing other work (which must be a temptation at present) - which might negate the benefits of the supposed increased leisure time ?

In the specific case of Samsung, we might also wonder if this isn't making a virtue of necessity - perhaps there isn't quite as much work to be done right now. There are several workplace trends at the moment (ceasing working from home) which may not be what they seem at face value. Working from home and 4 day weeks don't sound very like Samsung Korea to me.

Going back to point 2), allowing employees to choose how much time a week they work seems like a good idea - and is indeed an employee right in some European countries. But claiming that people should be paid the same for putting in less time is something completely different. If you can claim that 4 days are more productive than 5 ("Revenue at the participating firms jumped by 35% during the six-month trials") for permanent employees this raises two more questions:

a) Shouldn't the 4 day a week people be paid *more* than the 5 day ones ?
b) Wouldn't the same increase (or no drop) in output apply to hourly/daily paid contractors doing the same work ?

I think a bigger problem is actually the poor - or perhaps unimaginative - management in many technical businesses where people are kept in the same roles for years at a stretch with little variation. Early in my career, "job rotation" was a thing. It's decades since I heard the phrase.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

I have heard of (4) 10 hour days versus (5) 8 hour days. That seems reasonable. Work at home Fridays is also a possibility except it is not applicable to all professions. You could even push it to work at home Monday and Friday. Reducing to a 32 hour week is fine as well. Anything to better the work/life balance.

I asked my kids why they didn't follow me to Silicon Valley career-wise and they said it was because I worked to much. I didn't follow my father into the military because I wanted to get rich. Different generations.

 

[jmlobert]

1) If you can do in 4 days what you did last week in 5, have HR (or their consultants) determined exactly where the extra day was being wasted ? Surely, this is one of the first things you'd want to know and learn from. There seems to be no data or research on this.
a) Shouldn't the 4 day a week people be paid *more* than the 5 day ones ?

You're assuming that they will do the same work, which isn't the case. For a general 4-day work week, the company needs to hire people to make up for it, shifts or work days will overlap, not everyone get Friday off. Doing the same work in 4 days means 10 hour work days, which is possible, but hardly any less stressful, and not what is considered to be a work time reduction (40 to 32 hours, as is the case in Europe).

Having started to work 4 days a week myself (at a 20% pay cut), I can tell you, however, that you do become somewhat more efficient in what you do, so you make up some of the 20% work time cut, which explains the 35% jump in productivity that companies see.

As for Samsung, don't forget that this is only one day off per month, so it really is only 0.25 days off per week, something much easier to accommodate without new hires. And productivity will likely not suffer, as the lost time is made up by more relaxed workers.

 

[cliff]

Burnout? Get a good night's sleep.