Health Brainstorm: Three-Day Weekend, DIY Hearing Aid, HPV Vaccine



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The battle lines have been traced in America. But on one critical point at least, the division is not between the red state and the blue state, the conservatives and the liberals, the rural inhabitants and the townspeople. In this particular clash of principles, purple Alabama and Arizona lined up on Connecticut blue and Massachusetts; Idaho is in agreement with New York; Texas is in league with Vermont.

According to the Council of State Governments, twenty-three US states and the District of Columbia today commemorate Columbus Day – or as many people commemorating this calendar place, Aboriginal Peoples Day – as official holiday and give their employees the day off. Twenty-seven states do not have one. The federal government gives a day off to most of its civilian employees (this has been a statutory holiday since 1937), but few companies do the same. In its annual survey of employers, the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) found that only 14% of offices were closed for the day in 2017, a percentage that has been declining for years. In comparison, 19% of companies give their workers a day off for Veterans Day. (FORTUNE does not have the day off, as you can see.)

I'm raising this question, not to determine whether or not Columbus deserves a vacation – nor to debate whether the day should be renamed Aboriginal Peoples Day or Native American Day, as in South Dakota – but rather to clarify the facts I think we need a few more three-day weekends in this country. There, I told him.

And nearly a third of employers seem to agree, that is, if you reverse the argument a little bit.

In its 2018 employee benefits report, SHRM revealed that 27% of surveyed organizations now offer their employees compressed work weeks. In such arrangements, staff usually work nine to ten hours a day, four days a week (or a "4/10" schedule), although the theme varies greatly.

The workers themselves usually like the format, as one might imagine. And on the whole, companies implementing such programs seem to have tangible benefits. Overall, according to a 2010 analysis by Lori Wadsworth, Rex Facer and Chyleen Arbon of Brigham Young University on the subject, this research "showed that compressed work weeks were related to increased productivity, decreased turnover and absenteeism, higher levels of job satisfaction, decreased levels of anxiety and stress, and reduced transportation costs. "

(In a previous meta-analysis, researchers at Wayne State and Northern Illinois University found that, overall, "compressed weekly work schedules had a positive impact on performance ratings, job satisfaction". work and supervisor satisfaction, but did not affect productivity ".

Ten years ago, the state of Utah had been testing such an arrangement, believing that it would allow the government to save money. (That's the case.) But a few years later, the state gave up the experiment after citizens complained of limited access to the services of the government. State.

The workers, however, loved the facility. In a study of Utah city employees who adopted a 4/10 work schedule, workers even reported having reported "fewer conflicts at home".

Others, unsurprisingly, are skeptical about the fact that such a realignment of the traditional work regime from 9 am to 5 pm actually offers such benefits. Longer, more intense work days could lead to increased stress and fatigue, which could lead to more accidents in some industries, for example. The loss of "time spent in the face" at work could also mean less time for collaboration and problem solving.

And then, we fear that the three-day weekend will lose its heroic vacation status if every weekend is a matter of 72 hours. This is where I come to this argument. Personally, I'm not quite ready to squeeze every work week into a four-day time capsule.

I really wanted to take off today.

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