So if you were offered a four day working week, would you take it?

Actually, to save time, let me rephrase that and let me be careful so I don’t make a Trumpian mistake: if you were offered a four day working week, who wouldn’t take it.

Most of us would jump at it not because it’s a four day working week but because it means it’s a three day weekend. But to afford the three day weekend, we’ve got to work for four days, and in that work we have to make enough money that we can afford the luxury of the perpetual long weekend.

So the Perpetual Guardian trial of the four day working week has finished and its boss Andrew Barnes told Mike Hosking this morning it’s been a huge success; in fact, he rated it 9.5 out of 10. The fear was that to get all the work done, work life would be more stressful, but staff surveys say the stress level actually reduced.

The research shows the thing everyone loved was the substantial improvement in work-life balance. Andrew Barnes saw a massive increase in engagement. In other words, when people were at work, they worked. The staff were more satisfied and they intended to stay with the company longer.

The important thing here is productivity, and the company reports it’s as good as it’s always been.

Andrew Barnes believes it’s time to talk about our workforce and why we lag behind other countries in terms of productivity, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with him.

But productivity is one of those jargon buzz words that remains an abstract concept for many people. As Andrew Barnes says, we’re paying for productivity, not for hours worked. It’s a simple point that too few don’t get.

To show you how entrenched old ways of working are, just look at our employment legislation and specifically the Holidays Act, where you don’t earn your holidays for what you created and achieved but for how many hours and days you attended work.

Because of that framework, you can be penalised. If you complete your assigned task quickly you can end out with fewer holidays. It’s the same if you work above and beyond expectations.

Last year, I was a prime example. My work obligation was to provide a programme five day a week. No overtime. Sometimes the show took 20 hours to put together, some times it took six.

But because of the payroll system being based on hours, we had to put nominal hours in there. It all came unstuck when I took holidays and we had many complex calculations of hours to see if that was possible.

It all had nothing to do with productivity and was in no way efficient.

We see it in collective pay negotiations. We see it in arcane and archaic arguments about meeting times, smoko breaks and toilet time.

Grant Robertson has banged on for a long time about productivity. Perpetual Guardian is looking at the real issues. I hope the Finance Minister is watching closely so we stop talking about it and start lifting it.