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Comment by stinos | Hacker News Reader

the costs outweigh the benefits

Well, if you put a low enough price on people's happiness, health, and quality of work, then yes I guess.

Anyway: I hope the people involved in the pilot and happily doing 6 hours shifts now, won't take it too hard if the pilot should be stopped and they're back to 8 hour shifts.

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They are now back to 8 hour shifts, as the two year pilot ended with the close of 2016.

Sweden is one of the most liberal countries in the world. When they conclude the costs outweigh the benefits I'm inclined to believe them.

The trial was for 68 employees and cost $1.7 million USD (they had to hire additional staff). Imagine you took that $1.7m and spent it on those 68 employees. $25,000/employee would go a long way to increasing happiness with perks etc.

Yes I suppose the real question is would those employees "elect" for a 6 hour day with a 25% pay cut, or not...that would give you something of a feeling for whether the benefits out weight cost, as it were...

As mentioned elsewhere in this message, it depends on the job really. Nursing staff in a nursing home might benefit more from shorter shifts. Someone that is sitting at a desk taking phone calls or entering data might benefit from a bit longer of a day.

I'm more in the latter camp and my colleagues and I have been talking about doing 4x 9.5 hour days and just rotating who gets Friday's off vs the rest of the week. I could easily come a bit earlier, leave a bit later and get tons of benefits from 3 day weekends.

Though I suppose if there are performance improvements, it might be more of a 15% pay cut, or 10% [?]

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