Developed during the industrial revolution in the 19th-century, the concept of eight-hour workdays and forty-hour workweeks was intended to prevent the exploitation of workers. At the time, factory staff frequently faced 16-hour shifts. The move may have been viewed as dramatic and disruptive back then, but the times change.
There is now mounting evidence that people simply cannot be productive for forty hours a week. That even eight-hour days might be too much to handle. As noted by service desk software specialist AskSpoke, multiple studies have found that limiting the workweek even down to as little as three days has almost no impact on productivity and that reducing the time people spend at work can lead to employees that are happier, healthier, and more productive.
In Sweden, for instance, a nursing home conducted a two-year experiment that switched from eight-hour days to six-hour days. Sick leave dropped by 10 percent, and nurses reported they were more energetic, healthier, and more alert.
The simple fact is that our minds aren’t built to focus constantly on repetitive or simple tasks. Nor are we meant to spend our every waking hour working or thinking about work. Our focus, explains Srini Pillay of the Harvard Business Review, is ultimately limited.
And overdoing it can result in a lot of problems, both for your business and its staff. Low morale, lower cognitive function, more frequent absenteeism, more frequent mistakes. Overworked and exhausted employees, simply put, are bad for business.
Never mind the fact that an endless workweek is also arguably exploitative, especially given that not everyone makes a living wage on it. You are, after all, not just spending your time at work. You may have to deal with a lengthy commute and all its associated expenses, you need to get ready each morning, and there’s the constant pressure to be ‘online’ even outside working hours.
It’s a wonder anyone can get anything done in their personal lives at all.
Modern professionals have started waking up to this. They understand that this needs to change. Flexible working hours have consequently become the most valuable perk to more than 40 percent of employees, who note that it contributes to a better quality of life, improved physical and mental health, and the feeling that they’re valued by their employer.
The key here, as many progressive organizations have discovered, is to focus on productivity and flexibility instead of trying to force people into mandatory, micromanaged facetime. If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic has been incredibly effective in driving this home. Telecommuting has meant that flexible working hours are now a must, which has caused many to rethink how they feel about the traditional workweek.
People have realized that an exceptional workplace is defined not by meaningless amenities, but by happy, satisfied employees. They’ve realized that you don’t need to be dedicating nearly half – or more – of your waking hours to a job. And perhaps most importantly, they’ve realized that you don’t need to micromanage employees or force them to work set hours in order to maximize their productivity.
Instead, by focusing on employee morale, accountability, and freedom, they can empower their workforce in entirely new ways. Consider what life would look like if everyone had even a few extra hours to themselves. They could discover new projects and come up with new innovations, flexing their creativity for the benefit of both themselves and their employer.
As organizations and industries evolve to meet the needs and demands of the new crop of young professionals hitting the workforce, we will start to see significant changes in the way we usually approach working. We’ve come a long way since the assembly lines of the 20s, but to sustain a healthy and productive workforce, we have many more challenges to overcome.
We can blaze a trail towards healthy, humane work practices, and be a responsible example for other continents, but it’s something we need to do together.