Six-hour workday boosts productivity, worker satisfaction

"So far Canadian companies don't seem likely to try this Scandinavian model."

In recent years, some employers in Sweden began what many considered an audacious experiment: Local governments and privately owned companies in various cities put their staffs on a six-hour day.

The move went further than, for example, France's 35-hour workweek.

The results were somewhat surprising. Productivity and worker satisfaction were up, absenteeism and turnover were down. Employees interviewed by the media remarked on how they were more alert and focused during the workday, and they completed more work. Employees noted improved work-life balance. Some companies said they had more business and higher revenue.

So far, however, Canadian companies don't seem likely to try the Scandinavian model. For experts in organizational behaviour, what lies behind that is simply our cultural inertia.

Employees in North America believe they need to work extra hours to get ahead – and so do their managers.

While the Swedish results "have merit here as well, given the North American attitude toward work, it is not going to be an easy sell," said Ronald Burke, professor emeritus of organizational behaviour and industrial relations at York University's Schulich School of Business.

On the contrary, recent studies show employees in managerial jobs working more hours per week than they did 20 years ago, he said. A 2015 survey also found that, in the United States, more than half of workers don't take all the vacation days owed them.

"I think managers would laugh at [the shorter workweek]," said Chris Higgins, a retired professor from the University of Western Ontario's Ivey Business School. "They would say, 'Are you kidding? I work 60 hours a week – why the heck would I let my employees work 36?'"

But for John Trougakos, professor of organizational behaviour and human resources management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, "companies and employees have to get over the fact of eight-hour workdays."

Forty-hour weeks and eight-hour days have been with us since the manufacturing heyday of the early 1900s, he pointed out, "but we don't do the same kind of work today. Most of the time, we have to bring a greater mental capacity to the work we are doing, and that can be tiring.

"You can't see the physical fatigue of it," he added, "but you see the mental fatigue."

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Article Spotted by : Louise Burden

Article Written by: Agusta Dwyer

Article Published: Oct 12, 2016