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A NEW TRIAL programme which aims to allow employers to test the effectiveness of a four-day working week is being launched today.
The six-month experiment is being driven by the Four Day Week Ireland campaign. The group claims a four-day work week benefits employees, who enjoy a better work/life balance, and can also lead to greater productivity for businesses.
Organisations engaging with the scheme will receive supports, training and mentoring on how to implement the concept successfully. Employees involved in the scheme will not experience any loss of pay.
The pilot scheme will run on a parallel basis in a number of countries including Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
The government also announced today that it will fund research into the social, economic and environmental implications of a four-day working week.
Announcing the €150,000 research fund, Tánaiste and Minister For Enterprise and Employment Leo Varadkar said it’s “too early to say” whether a four-day week could work in Ireland, but the idea is “ambitious”.
“I can see how that might work for some roles but it’s hard to see how it would work in others particularly in health, education and manufacturing for example,” Varadkar said.
But we need to keep an open mind when it comes to innovations in the world of work.
Minister for Environment Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan said a four-day week could help reduce carbon emissions and air pollution, improve people’s work-life balance and support gender equality.
“We need to look at the potential and assess the impacts of such a change, and this research will help us figure that out,” he said.
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Gives me a great idea for matching wedding flowers to bridesmaids dresses!!
@Brianog2- dont do that!! The food dye ends up staining dresses! I wanted royal blue flowers for my wedding & as royal blue doesn’t occur naturally in nature, white flowers dyed was an option but my florist freaked out & said no, she’d see too many dresses destroyed by people dying white flowers!
A far better way to get kids interested in science would be to involve some sort of explosion.
That’s safe and easy to do with some breadsoda and water.
And vinegar Dermot.
Mentos and coke either
I forgot the vinegar! Doh!
A nice idea is splitting the stems of the flower and putting half in one colour and half in another colour, its a little bit more impressive.
There are thousands of simple experiments to do with small kids, great for getting them interested in science.
I remember doing this experiment in 1st class many moons ago.
My science teacher did this with red dye in a geranium plant so you could see every stem and leaf highlighted in red- fantastic!
Getting my sons ‘hotwires’ and a ‘microscope set’ for xmas so they can experiment with technology and science. At 9 and 8 they should be old enough to do it themselves.
Oh that reminds me I forgot to get a chemistry set…
I put myself in hospital for 10 days with a chemistry set when I was a kid.Magnesium tape is a basterd when mixed with phos. Happy days indeed.Still have the scars.
*Not being sarcastic. Just keep an eye on the kid.Some of those chemicals can burn to the bone.
I have done this with kids at school , great experiment!
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