Utah and Four-Day Workweeks
James “Duke” Aiona has brought up the idea of four-day workweeks for state employees as part of his campaign platform.
The Republican candidate for governor, at a Wednesday press conference, said working four 10-hour days would give workers three-day weekends, ease traffic congestion, save transportation and other costs and improve overall quality of life.
Aiona said worker productivity would not be affected, either, and pointed to Utah as a possible model for the program.
But a performance audit of the Working 4 Utah Initiative could not determine how productivity was impacted, and found that savings attributed to the program were overstated.
“A Performance Audit Of the Working 4 Utah Initiative,” dated July 2010, was conducted by Utah’s legislative auditor general and submitted to the Utah Legislature.
The initiative came from a July 2008 executive order by then-Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. The one-year pilot project, which began that August 4, altered the work schedule of most state employees from five 8-hour days a week to four 10-hour days a week.
The authors of the in their digest wrote that they were unable to find “enough objective data to draw any firm conclusions regarding the effects of the four-day workweek on worker productivity.”
Anecdotal evidence, the authors wrote, suggested that productivity improved in some government agencies but not others.
They also concluded that savings attributed to the Working 4 Utah Initiative were overstated.
“It has been reported that the initiative cut the cost of state government by many millions of dollars,” the auditors wrote. “We have verified that the cost of utilities, fleet services, and overtime have all declined since the state changed to a four-day workweek. However, the savings in these areas are not entirely due to the four-day workweek. Instead, other factors appear to have caused the reduction in costs. We estimate that the initiative produced less than a $1 million savings on building operations, overtime, and fleet services.”
The audit recommended stronger policies to ensure worker productivity during four-day workweeks (which are referred to as the “four tens” in the report).
“We are concerned by the growing acceptance of several policy issues associated with the four-day workweek,” they wrote “These include allowing employees to: work without taking a break for lunch, take exercise release time at the beginning or end of the workday, work during the commute, and telecommute in order to meet their personal needs.”
Their concern is financial, they explained: “We cannot overstate the importance of guarding against weak policies and their potential for impacting employee productivity. The state executive branch spends about $1.5 billion on employee compensation each year. As a result, just a 1 percent reduction in productivity in state government would cost about $15 million each year. That amount significantly exceeds the $1 Million in the operational savings attributed to the Working 4 Utah Initiative.”
One other worry: The Utah Constitution defines a day’s work as eight hours.
At his press conference, Aiona admitted he did not “follow up as much as he wanted to” on Utah’s experiment with the four-day workweek. He said he wanted to talk to Utah’s governor, who was lieutenant governor under Huntsman.
