Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Now tell me how can I do that all with working like donkeys?
Human side of life is much more than living in a Software bubble.
EDIT: corrected some typos.
You get 480 days paid vacation per child (shared between husband and wife). It is very common in every office (regardless of occupation, work type) that people go to 6-8 months vacation for full time. Lot of persons take half day off for extended period of time.
But remember that especially in the scandinavian welfare states, your consumption isn't just your salary, it's a wide range of often rather expensive public services.
As is mentioned in the article, this has a flavour of political posturing, and it's not given that it will treated perfectly scientifically. But, of course, if it turns out that the employees are actually more efficient at the same cost, you can have your cake and eat it too.
It seems that outsiders (I am guessing you are, by the way you frame it) are eager to remind us that we have large public sectors, or whatever you want to call it. It feels a bit rude to me; as if you know better than us how our societies/governments are structured.
We do know that money doesn't grow on trees. We do know that "free" doesn't mean "from out of nowhere", handed to us by our benevolent, watchful, government.
Does it really need to be pointed out that if you work less (absolutely, not just measured by hours), you will be less productive? Please. Give us some credit.
It can be easy to take for granted your current situation, and become oblivious to it. So it often takes an outsider to remind the insiders of their situation. It is no different from how the lack of universal health insurance in the US may not be apparent to the ~85% of Americans who do have health insurance.
If you're remote, and only clock-in when actually working, spending 3-4h/day working productively can easily outdo someone spending 10h/day in an office. I've worked in places where my ultimate client billable rate was obscene, and tracked to the 6min or 15min interval, but we also had "house time" for other projects. A day where you spent 3h directly working for the customer and nothing else was perfectly fine (especially if you blocked the entire day out with "need to be available for client" so no one else could interrupt you.)
Spending the downtime doing actually interesting research (not so much 20% time as 50% time) was awesome.
- The people working six hour days have been told that this may improve productivity so the excitement of being part of the experiment may indeed encourage them to be more effective in the short term
- They have a strong incentive to work harder because if the experiment concludes that six hour days are more effective, they will likely get to keep working six hour days.
The relevant Wikipedia page suggests that two months is about the upper limit for excitement-based productivity gains, so 1 year should be enough.
Personally, I loathed 40 hour weeks at jobs where things are repetitive or physically demanding (I have terrible ankles at 28 from so many on-my-feet positions. I'd probably work 50 hour weeks at a programming gig, switching between studying concepts, coding, and studying existing code simply because you can change up the work sequence.
[0] http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962
http://money.msn.com/investing/post--what-happened-to-the-6-...
In the '50s, a new management team arrived, one that may have tended to "denigrate and 'feminize' shorter hours." They became embarrassed by the short hours that they were working -- shorter than the shifts worked by men at other local jobs. They changed their rhetoric, downplaying the freedom that leisure gave.
Six-hour workdays wouldn't let them keep up with the Joneses, and many men did not receive much enjoyment from their marginal leisure hours. "Like management, senior male workers were concerned about the loss of status and control. Several men told about the friction that resulted when the men spent too much time around the house: "The wives didn't like the men underfoot all day." "The wife always found something for me to do if I hung around." "We got into a lot of fights." Many of the men confessed that they were at loose ends when they were working six hours. [Mr Zine]
But your second point is just absurd. If wanting to keep your shorter working hours turns out to be such a good incentive to work harder and smarter that it improves productivity on the long run, then how does this not prove that shorter hours improve productivity?
It's a common misconception that eight-hour work day means 9-17 everywhere. In Sweden, the common work day is from 8-17, meaning 8 hours paid time and 1 hour non-paid lunch hour. To my understanding, it's more or less required by law.
So if you look on how many hours we will be "at work", we will go from working one hour more than Americans to one hour less.
:/
In the US (at least for office jobs), full time is 40 hours, either 8-5, 9-6, or somewhere in between. Because of the 1 hour break.
I think that 9-5 is a total acceptable amount of time to work.
Most office workers go 9 to 6 or 8 to 5.
This system has very deep historical roots, and is something that the social democrats (that dominated swedish politics for a long time) and the unions are very proud of. Because of this Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, for instance. It could be argued that this is a more liberal (in the classical sense, not the us meaning) way to go than what most of the US has done, which is a bit interesting.
(We do have laws about paternity leave, vacation time etc, so it doesn't encompass everything.)
The union system is also much more highly coordinated, though part of that is indeed traditional rather than in law. Rather than every union having to negotiate its own conditions, some conditions are agreed at the central level, in framework agreements reached between the Confederation of Danish Employers (DA) and the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO). The minimum wage is one of those: effectively all Danish workplaces have a minimum wage of 109 DKK/hr, the amount agreed to in the last framework negotiation.
In Germany you are required by law to take at least a 30 minute break during an eight hour work day, but that break is not paid. You have to clock out. (I suppose employers could pay employees for that time, but they don’t have to and they usually don’t.)
In fact, at my last internship the system automatically subtracted 30 minutes from the work time at the end of the day if you didn’t manually clock out for more than 30 minutes, assuming you just forgot to clock out. After all, the employer can’t pay you for eight hours of continuous work, that would be admitting to illegal wrongdoing.
Employers can also require employees to clock out for shorter breaks, though they usually don’t when you are just chatting a few minutes with your coworkers in the office kitchen while getting coffee or something like that. (General, uhm, personal maintenance like just getting something to drink in the office kitchen or going to the toilet is not considered taking a break and employers can’t force employees to clock out for that.)
I never even considered that it could work any other way … (My dad is a civil engineer and always has too much work. However, during my childhood I vividly remember him coming home every day at 1pm until about 2pm to eat lunch at home. His office is only about a seven minute drive from home. He was and is often at work until 8pm, but he hardly ever missed lunch at home. I know that’s not the norm even for Germany – most people find some place to eat around the office or bring something to eat to the office – but that may explain my perspective on this.)
This is at a big company in the US.
Also what kind of words would the employer use to describe these working conditions (looks like its beyond normal "flexitime" arrangements) so that others might find them too?
The employer doesn't use any words to describe it, its just part of the culture I guess. Just get your work done, no one cares when you're in the office. We have a scrum meeting we're expected to attend and a few sprints meetings/allhands, but everything else we are free to schedule whatever suits us best. Initially I was a little disappointed about how little vacation time I was getting, but I've taken a few days off and have never been docked days from my balance.
Too bad though, because I've worked in alot of offices and from home, contracting etc.. Clearly at least two hours out of eight are wasted every day. People take smoke breaks, people chit chat, go to lunch, browse the web, stay in meetings too long, and on and on. I could see people really trying to be productive knowing they are only on a six hour day.
Very valid point.
I saw a doco, years ago, about Americans who'd moved to France for work. A constant comment was the astonishment at how much more productive the French were per hour in their office environment. They were coming from US workplaces where the norm was to have a big commute, work an hour or more a day of unpaid overtime, to one where the sub-40 hour work week was rigidly enforced. The main thing that went away was zoned-out office workers spending their days talking about TV and office gossip. (YMMV, of course).
That being said, I could imagine a scenario in Sweden where contractors are now more in demand. As it might be a way around the 6 hours and still hire for 8-9 hour days.
OTOH, I think the dynamic in labour economies is such that it doesn't seem to correctly value employee "surplus." I do think that empirically it's hard to ignore the fact that regulation of labour markets has had successes, some of them very important. I think most employees would be worse off without labour laws.
Labour economies (maybe norms is a better word) seem to be much more influenced by "cultural" forces than "economic" ones. If this market was functioning in a healthy way, I would expect to see much more variation in arrangements and less standardization within companies. I believe there's an explanation to be found in Ronald Coase's "The Nature of The Firm" (1937 Economics paper), but I don't have a mature enough idea to be able to boil it down to an HN comment.
Laissez Faire vs labour laws aside, I think that the notion that the number of hours we work today should be lower than 20 years ago is reasonable.
In an increasing number of jobs more hours doesn't mean more work gets done. For a shopkeeper, dermatologist or factory worker, output per hour is fairly fixed (and transparent). More hours = more work. For a graphic designer, policy analyst, medical researcher or social media manager the relationship is fuzzier. Productivity varies a lot and shorter days can boost productivity. At the same time, worker productivity is opaque and a 'last person at his desk' culture often develops with employees trying to demonstrate their commitment. We are shedding the first kind of job and adding the second.
This is an area where I now accept the need for government intervention because I am compelled to do so by an overwhelming weight of evidence. We now know that the optimum working week for economic output, let alone quality of life, is substantially less than forty hours. We also know that it cannot be left to individual employees to negotiate with their employers. In a perfect world perhaps it could, but in the real world it cannot. It's one of those problems that just has to be solved by collective rather than individual action.
Sweden actually doesn't regulate many of these things in law, for example there is no law for minimum wage unlike most other countries. Instead the government has traditionally let unions and employers' organizations hash it out.
The plan here is to work for a midsize company with a good secure reputation, have kids and then just do the bare minimum until you retire.
I think its undermining the intellectual capital we have to not be ambitious, not work hard and not accomplish more than the bare minimum.
I work a lot more than 6 hours a day. I run two startups, about to quit my fulltime job to do said startup. I have 7 am meetings, I work weekends and nights. My girlfriend is not always impressed with how hard I work but she gets it and supports me.
I think the option should be there, but it should not accepted as default. If the American dream is to be something the Swedish dream is to be nothing.
If it's true there are 5 stages to producing ideas, a 6-hour day benefits from unconscious thinking done away from the task [1] at lower pay. Whereas an 8-hour work day benefits some of a worker's thinking for their non-work projects, which currently happens on the job.
The substance behind the work is more important than its structure on paper.
[1] http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/04/a-techniqu...
Hell, putting the stuff you've figured out overnight on paper (or into the IDE) is very satisfying even in the absence of payment, because for a few hours, you can be super efficient. This always feels like a strong and productive use of time.
Who said anything about getting paid less? A salary is a salary.
A six hour workday would be 30 hours a week. Imagine that as three ten hour days instead. Wow, that would be fantastic.
I'm not a morning person, yet my job has me coming in before 8:30 so I can attend morning standups (ugh). Right after lunch though, I can easily get in the "zone" and do a ton of good work.
Less commute time, more time to pursue hobbies and take trips.
I bet 4 * 9 hours days would have a negligible impact on worker productivity and reduce costs like heating, cooling, lighting, since offices would be closed an extra day.
If they could remove some of these inefficiencies and return the time to employees it would be great.
There absolutely would still be distractions.
But possibly less per hour in a 6 hour day than an 8, and so still a more efficient. Some studies on this would be interesting.
And exactly how is this experiment going to collect useful data about the impacts of a shorter workday? Details matter if this is actually science. If it is really just politics then who cares as long as it is popular with the majority.
We should need more scientific approaches like this to decision making in politics.
At least in the US, having, say, a Friday off means you can easily run to the bank or do other personal business that is much easier to do during the week than the weekend.
Bureaucracy has kicked in, and now the flexible working hours are less flexible as are the holidays. If someone insists that I be in by an exact time, I'll make sure I leave exactly 8 hour later these days.
However, they don't get to choose the day. It is assigned to them. The state is doing it to cut down on traffic and commuting, as well as facilities costs.
However, so far they say they haven't lost any productivity by doing this program. Of course:
1) They want it to work because the taxpayers are watching 2) A lot of folks work from home on their "day off"
My point is these are all tough experiments to run due to human nature and not wanting to be perceived as working less than your peers.
No, they haven't.
> They require all their workers to take a day off out of each 10 work days (so a 5 day week and then a 4 day).
No, they don't. Some California state workers have the option to take a "9/8/80" schedule (an 80-hour, two-week schedule with 8 nine-hour workdays and 1 eight-hour workday, and 1 weekday off) or a "4/10/40" schedule (a 40-hour, one-week schedule with 4 ten-hour workdays and one weekday off). [1] But these, like the baseline 5-days @ 8 hours/day schedule, are all 40-hour/week (averaged over each two-week period, in the case of 9/8/80) schedules, not reduced schedules like a 4-day, 8-hour/day schedule.
Additionally, most permanent full-time state workers have the option of an additional leave day per month with a 5-percent reduction in pay. [2]
And, recently, there were several years where most employees experienced furloughs varying between 1 to 3 days per month with accompanying pay reductions as part of a cost 'cutting' (large, cost deferring) measure. [3]
[1] http://www.calhr.ca.gov/employees/pages/alternate-work-week-...
[2] https://www.calhr.ca.gov/employees/Pages/leave-benefits.aspx...
[3] see, e.g., http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/14/local/la-me-state-pa...
I suspect the only reason most people accept it is that they learned it at school so it must be true.
1. Not all jobs are created equal, and not all unemployed persons are qualified or capable of performing all jobs. There would still be a mismatch in positions available and workers to fill those positions; without "perfect" alignment a community productivity deficit would continue, moving the costs around instead of eliminating them.
2. It'd become politically desirable to disproportionately point these efforts at industries where it'd be easier to integrate the unemployed ranks (lower skill set barriers to entry). This would have an effect of reducing profit margins in those sectors given the increased overhead of a larger workforce for an unpredictable amount of productivity change. One expects if the total labor hours are the same, economic output of an individual entity in that economy would be equal while personnel costs would increase.
3. There will always be a small portion of the working populace out of work for legitimate reasons.
And, please do a little Googling on seasonal work. In the US, for example, millions of jobs fluctuate between seasons depending on buying and production trends. That's not small peas, so to speak.
And this can happen with less than a few percent friction cost?
Explaining why this will fail, let alone describing how it did indeed fail where it was tried is econ 101 material. As someone else pointed out, look up Lump of Labour fallacy.
As it is, as two separate one-axis bar charts, they are mostly incomprehensible for the intended purpose.
Utah ends 4-day workweek experiment
http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/04/utah-ends-4-day-workweek-e...
Given the description, it looks like the position is elderly care. Which is hard to measure directly, but the indirect measures (e.g. customer satisfaction, mistake counts, etc.) may actually improve from shorter shifts, but the costs would probably rise or services will be reduced since you'd need to either hire people to cover the hours or not serve people in those two hours. Since there are probably also fixed non-hourly costs to hiring this would be an additional expense.