Swampscott town hall announces 4 day work week

[msRB311]

Originally Posted by WestieWhitie

I mean, all those councilcritters and townhallcritters could have a zero day work week and no one would even notice.

haha

[P Larsen]

Traditionally, when many retail businesses only had a half day on a weekend day, Thursday evenings were the evening of the workweek when banks and merchants stayed open later.

[msRB311]

Seems like we’re moving towards a work sucks culture so let’s not do it.

But seriously the mon through Friday 9 to 5 be in an office all day was created about a hundred years ago and so much had changed since it’s inception. I think a lot of people are just rethinking why the need to be working mon through Friday 8 hours a day.

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by masssachoicetts

I work in that field. A four day work week condenses activities to become more efficient.

Most govt inefficiency comes from slow performance/little care/no desire to work faster.

My point exactly! If an employee doesn't care about or isn't motivated to complete their work in 5 days I can't imagine they'd be any more likely to complete it in 4 days. If you work for the government it's just too easy to keep your job even if you're a poor performer.

Originally Posted by robr2

Per the article, they are going to be open more hours than they were.

I didn't memorize the article but I feel like it said in one spot that town hall would be open more hours total and then in another it said employees would be working fewer hours every week but would receive the same amount of pay. To me that says employees are working fewer hours and have a shorter work week. You can still be open longer hours with employees having a shorter work week if not all employees are on the same schedule.

[robr2]

Originally Posted by WestieWhitie

I mean, all those councilcritters and townhallcritters could have a zero day work week and no one would even notice.

Most of those council jobs are part-time and held by people with other jobs. They're not at town hall all day, every day.

[robr2]

Originally Posted by MikePRU

I didn't memorize the article but I feel like it said in one spot that town hall would be open more hours total and then in another it said employees would be working fewer hours every week but would receive the same amount of pay. To me that says employees are working fewer hours and have a shorter work week. You can still be open longer hours with employees having a shorter work week if not all employees are on the same schedule.

It's possible they may work fewer hours during the week but they are working more hours in a day. It's possible they get OT for over 8 hours in a day so the pay comes out the same.

I had a job one summer in college that we worked a 4 day week and worked 9 hours and 20 minutes a day. The hour-twenty was at time and half and the pay equaled working 40 hours over 5 days.

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by robr2

It's possible they may work fewer hours during the week but they are working more hours in a day. It's possible they get OT for over 8 hours in a day so the pay comes out the same.

I had a job one summer in college that we worked a 4 day week and worked 9 hours and 20 minutes a day. The hour-twenty was at time and half and the pay equaled working 40 hours over 5 days.

That's possible. Either way, I stand by my statement that unless measures are put in place for stronger accountability and performance measures for municipal employees then shortening the work week for them in hopes that it will increase productivity is an idea that's going to blow up in the town's face.

[mdovell]

Originally Posted by MikePRU

That's possible. Either way, I stand by my statement that unless measures are put in place for stronger accountability and performance measures for municipal employees then shortening the work week for them in hopes that it will increase productivity is an idea that's going to blow up in the town's face.

Not really because you're confusing Effectiveness with efficiency. You're confusing activity with accomplishment. Those are two different things. Just because something's done more efficiently doesn't mean that the results are going to be any better. Let's suppose you take a town planning department and if they basically approved every rezoning concept thrown their way that doesn't mean that the town is being any better Zone. In many respects things like this are created because it's simply a form of competition. There's competition within government because not all departments and not all areas have the same budget so as people get more experience there's no non-disclosure agreements are non-compete agreements so the experience transfers over. I've seen teachers from Lexington public schools become professors at Stanford. I've seen people go halfway across the country to get better paid compensation.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Municipal unions are not able to go on strike and even if they were there's no actual Employee Stock Program and pensions are actually significantly more than Social Security. 6.25% versus about 11%.

You want saying specifically would performance measurements would be because you can't have a performance without some form of standards and the place with the highest amount of standards would be government between all the rules and regulations.

I know plenty of poor companies that keep on poor performance that happens all the time. It's not like you can just fire somebody the drop of a hat. Right now I'm reading a book about corporate governance and when you've got Boards of directors and shareholders of course they're going to have an influence so it doesn't really make it that much different of more efficient than the public sector. In the past I worked for a retailer and there was a guy that supposedly had a lifetime job. The reason why is because we bought out a small competitor in California and it turns out that his parents were highly ranked on their. It's part of the agreement to buy out the company he is always to have a job. Just like I know of some companies that might fire people and put on a non-competitive agreement which makes no sense and then they work for a company that ends up getting bought out by the same company so they end up getting the jobs back!

The vast majority of jobs in any sector have your standard operating procedures you've got policies and procedures at tell you specifically what to do in a given situation. You're not really going to do them any faster in the private sector because you're not going to have that much of an incentive to do so. Unless there's a higher compensation or some form of a bonus it's just not going to happen.

I think what your argument is about is more about your ocracy but you see that all over the place of course people hate your ocracy but if you want to have some form of measurement along side of balances it's going to have to stay. So your sales and marketing teams get into arguments, HR is arguing with hiring with every other department, purchasing and finance getting in the arguments of our procedures and the list goes on and on it's nothing different from each sector

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by mdovell

Not really because you're confusing Effectiveness with efficiency. You're confusing activity with accomplishment. Those are two different things. Just because something's done more efficiently doesn't mean that the results are going to be any better. Let's suppose you take a town planning department and if they basically approved every rezoning concept thrown their way that doesn't mean that the town is being any better Zone. In many respects things like this are created because it's simply a form of competition. There's competition within government because not all departments and not all areas have the same budget so as people get more experience there's no non-disclosure agreements are non-compete agreements so the experience transfers over. I've seen teachers from Lexington public schools become professors at Stanford. I've seen people go halfway across the country to get better paid compensation.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Municipal unions are not able to go on strike and even if they were there's no actual Employee Stock Program and pensions are actually significantly more than Social Security. 6.25% versus about 11%.

You want saying specifically would performance measurements would be because you can't have a performance without some form of standards and the place with the highest amount of standards would be government between all the rules and regulations.

I know plenty of poor companies that keep on poor performance that happens all the time. It's not like you can just fire somebody the drop of a hat. Right now I'm reading a book about corporate governance and when you've got Boards of directors and shareholders of course they're going to have an influence so it doesn't really make it that much different of more efficient than the public sector. In the past I worked for a retailer and there was a guy that supposedly had a lifetime job. The reason why is because we bought out a small competitor in California and it turns out that his parents were highly ranked on their. It's part of the agreement to buy out the company he is always to have a job. Just like I know of some companies that might fire people and put on a non-competitive agreement which makes no sense and then they work for a company that ends up getting bought out by the same company so they end up getting the jobs back!

The vast majority of jobs in any sector have your standard operating procedures you've got policies and procedures at tell you specifically what to do in a given situation. You're not really going to do them any faster in the private sector because you're not going to have that much of an incentive to do so. Unless there's a higher compensation or some form of a bonus it's just not going to happen.

I think what your argument is about is more about your ocracy but you see that all over the place of course people hate your ocracy but if you want to have some form of measurement along side of balances it's going to have to stay. So your sales and marketing teams get into arguments, HR is arguing with hiring with every other department, purchasing and finance getting in the arguments of our procedures and the list goes on and on it's nothing different from each sector

I'm not confusing anything. My feeling is if it used to take 2 weeks to get a building permit and they shrink the hours of the employees in the building department then it will now take 2+ weeks to get the same permit. My feeling is the employee will work at the same pace but with fewer hours to complete the same tasks in a week the tasks will require more calendar days to complete.

Government is one of the most inefficient organizations out there. In some regards it has to be . . . providing services to those being governed is not exactly a for profit business. This being said I feel the conditions that I layed out in my earlier post are far more rampant in government than the private sector (I'm not saying they don't exist at all there) and that's why there needs to be a more similar level of accountability for municipal employees to what private sector employees live with if we ever want to make government more efficient.

These issues are often handled a little differently in the private sector. Take the example you mentioned of the employee with guaranteed employment. That wasn't an inefficient decision to take him on. It was a cost of the acquisition and including the cost of paying this guy annually I'm sure the numbers still worked out. I'm sure they stuck him in some position that didn't matter or didn't have any authority. The same things happens regularly in municipal government except in government these guys who get positions through things like nepotism usually don't get meaningless/powerless positions.

[mdovell]

Actually it did matter as it's top management.

Another story is the vendors we had. Companies hired to put in displays and signs etc. Well they were paid by manufacturers and were by district. So they then decided to go with internal employees but didn't tell they the payroll was separate. Store managers used them for other tasks to the point of lawsuits. So they hired managers to make sure they were not grabbed by other managers.

You also have the first to patent rather than invent process. That means you make something but wait until someone else mKes it and then sue.

With permits supposedly its a month where I am. The trouble is as places don't grow it gets harder to replace for local government, especially with top spots and part time. Retirees in mass can't work full Time year round in government