It was reported in the news recently that businesses in Sweden are slashing the working week from the typical 40 hours to a much more relaxed 30 hour working week.
This 6 hour day isn’t even a new concept in Sweden with Toyota doing this over 13 years ago. Interestingly, they found that this caused a boost to staff morale and an increase in profits.
Should we as business owners be following suit?
When you think about a typical working day most employees find it incredibly difficult to concentrate on work for the full working day. As a result, the average employee peppers his day with distractions from Facebook, to making rounds of coffee to ineffective meetings. These distractions no doubt add up to a few hours over the course of a full day.
So in order to make this concept work it’s clear that you would also need to drastically reduce the distractions in order to increase the “actual” working time. This is no small task as it would mean a bit of an overhaul in work place practices and culture.
But the benefits would be obvious, tell your staff that you are paying them the same but they only have to work 6 hours a day and you will be heralded the best boss ever!
Sickness days will no doubt reduce and you will be able to recruit the best talent around due to your appealing working hours. On top of this flexible working problems and working around school runs will be a thing of the past.
Work 6 hours a day or…
If this all seems a bit too drastic for you then how about stealing a super cool idea that a company in the US implemented?
When the annual wage increases came round they gave their employees the option of either a pay rise or to be able to work a few less hours per week. All of the staff took the working less option, they’re much happier and now spend Friday afternoons surfing in Malibu!
