(Newswire.net — January 12, 2017) — Sweden has been experimenting with shorter days of 6 hours, which means two hours less than the regular workday. According to the Scandinavian country, the results are promising.
In 2014 the municipality of Götenborg started the tests with the 6-hour workday. Officials could work 6 hours instead of 8 per day, for the same salary. It was mayer Pilhelm´s plan to reduce the work pressure of the employees. Because of this, it was expected that also the leave of absence would reduce, while the productivity should take a loop and increase.
Other employers across the country have already made the change, according to Science Alert. The goal is to get more done in a shorter amount of time and ensure people had more time for their private lives. Anne Charlotte Dahlbom Larsson, director of the nursery home Svartedalens mentions that “since the 90´s the work pressure only has been increased, while the staff only decreased. It´s a development which can´t longer continue.”
Two years ago, the nursery home started with the shorter workdays, of which the results still are very promising. The nurses seem to have more energy and are experiencing less symptoms of stress. Consequently, nurses have more time to spend with the residents to which this is a great development as well.
Better quality
Even though the shorter workdays have shown good results, there is a flipside. It has cost the municipality of Göteborg more money, because the nursery home needed more employees to fill in the gaps to compensate the shorter workdays. But Larssen emphasizes that 8-hours ask too much of the employees, resulting in more tiredness on the working floor and sometimes even depression. “That will be no good for anybody, not for the company, not for the employee”.
After the positive results, have being published, more Swedish institutions have followed the example. Several divisions in hospitals are now also working with shorter days, to keep their employees focused for a shorter working period. Also, small companies in Sweden have tested the new workdays and it turned out they were very enthusiastic.
Four-hour workday
The duration of the workdays is something which has been central for many discussions already. Paulsen, of the University in Lund, says that “politicians have been announcing for quite some time that we need to create more jobs by using more hours. The productivity though has been doubled since the 70´s, so in theory we could even decrease the hours down to 4 hours a day.” For some people this might be unthinkable, working part-time for a fulltime salary.
Therefore, spending 8 hours a day will decrease your focus and will eventually lead to more absence at work. So, to meet the employee´s healthy work environment, making the workdays shorter by 2 hours a day will be a step in the right direction. Unless you have for instance winning lottery nummbers and results when you participated in big and exciting lotteries with services like Multilotto, then you don´t have to worry at all about the length of the workdays. But till then, 2 hours a day more to spend on other obligations than work will contribute to better work results and focus and probably a better social life.