Four days on the calendar

Original opinion extract, written for practice.

Our office trialled a four-day week, and the first report announced that output had remained unchanged. Excellent news, said the director. It may be. I would also like to know whether people worked longer evenings, answered messages on the fifth day or quietly postponed tasks which the chosen measure did not count. None of those questions is an argument for keeping everybody at a desk. I want the arrangement to succeed well enough that its benefits survive an honest description. Ask about concentration, tiredness and time outside work as well as completed files. If the experiment gives people more freedom, let us establish that. If it merely folds the same pressure into a smaller square on the calendar, the photograph of Friday has not told the whole story.

Use your own words to evaluate the writer’s attitude to judging a shorter working week. Give details from the extract to justify your answer.