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Discussions around the six-hour workday seem to be the dominant trend around hiring and management this year. In Sweden, a country well-known for its investments in social welfare, nursing home employees in Gothenburg began experimenting with reduced hours in 2015, and many Swedish employers have since switched over to shorter workdays. And while the concept has only been newsworthy for a year or so, Toyota Service Center in Gothenburg established a 30-hour workweek as far back as 2003.
Proponents of the shortened workweek cite studies showing that even people who diligently work a full eight-hour workday are only productive for 6-7 of those hours, resulting in at least five wasted hours per week. Studies find that those working a shorter workweek—for the same full-time pay, by the way—are less prone to burnout, had more time for their private pursuits, and were generally happier and more productive. The shortened workweek might not seem ideal for shift work, but the Toyota Center Gothenburg’s study begs to differ. In a 13-minute presentation, their CEO described how splitting their mechanics’ eight-hour workday into two six-hour shifts enabled the company to extend their hours, eliminate mistakes, improve employee morale, and increase daily billable hours.
The eight-hour day has been commonplace for 100 years or so, but it originated during the Industrial Revolution. In the early 19th century factory workers put in 10-16 hour days, six days a week. As early as 1817 social reformer and utopian socialist Robert Owen petitioned for an eight-hour day, calling for a balanced schedule of “eight hours’ labor, eight hours’ recreation, and eight hours’ rest.” On an international scale the workday dropped to 12 hours, then 10, until eight-hour days became common in many industries in the early 20th century.
So will the 30-hour (or at least shortened) workweek idea cross the Atlantic in the near future? While 40-hour weeks are still the most common schedules among full-time American workers, a 2014 Gallup poll found that Americans average 47 hours per week. But American employers have been experimenting with their own workplace changes, one of the more radical being the results-only work environment, or ROWE.
 ROWE goes a step beyond a shortened workweek in that it obliterates consistent working hours altogether, paying employees for their output rather than the hours they put in. Under the ROWE system an employee and his/her manager set concrete goals, and so long as the employee meets their goals it’s irrelevant whether they worked 10 hours per week or 40 to get there. The concept was created by Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler while they were working at Best Buy (the two have since started their own consulting group for implementing ROWE). Thompson and Ressler envision a work environment in which each person in the organization is 100% accountable, 100% autonomous, and “treated as an adult,” fostering a culture of competence rather than complacency.
ROWE makes a lot of sense on paper—some workers are able to tear through their work in four hours and can relax for the remainder of the day, while others prefer a slower and more balanced approach, and both can achieve the same goals using their own method. And considering again the fact that the eight-hour day doesn’t consist of eight full productive hours, employees wouldn't technically be paid for unproductive hours. The concept was short-lived at Best Buy, though, and CEO Hubert Joly abolished ROWE in 2013 in response to a serious revenue downturn. Joly’s justification was that a downturn requires an “all hands on deck” culture shift, much like Marissa Mayer’s much-publicized decision to end telecommuting at Yahoo earlier in 2013. One major American employer, Gap, still implements ROWE for their corporate employees.
Considering the original conditions that necessitated the eight-hour day, a six-hour day and extremely flexible work environments seem like a lot to ask. But with continued advances in remote technology and more businesses attempting to tighten their belts, we may not have heard the end of ROWE and shortened workdays in the US.
Image credit: chispita_66 / CC BY 2.0
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Re: Will Six-hour Workdays Catch On In America?
