Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? A workday of just six hours - or a mere 30 hours a week. Pie in the sky? Or actually a better way of managing our increasingly frenetic lives and making sure we have time for both our work and our families without being overloaded with exhaustion from trying to do it all or guilt for feeling that you aren't.
This particular study references the fact that nursing staff included in the experiment were reporting they were less tired, that there were fewer sick days taken and that productivity has actually increased. This could even have the knock on effect of actually saving lives of patients through less waiting time and increased surgeries.
Could a shorter working day mean that we all could become better managers of our time? That we'd make better use of our resources, plan more and utilise this time to get the job done? (and spend less time furtively online shopping as we don't have any other time to do it) There's always going to be some calls we need to make after hours - this is particularly applicable in recruitment - and some emails that need responding to late at night but perhaps they should be the exception rather than the rule. After all, as the popular saying goes, no one ever died wishing they had spent more time at work...
A radical experiment has been underway in the Swedish city of Gothenburg for the past several months. Rather than ask employees to work a normal 40-hour week, a nursing home, a hospital, a factory, and a tech start-up have all implemented six-hour workdays.
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