Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
theatlantic.com
Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
1–10 of 113 posts
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#2Six-hour days may be more productive, but this won't prove it one way or the other because:
- 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.
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#3Six-hour days may be more productive, but this won't prove it one way or the other because: - 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 wi…
How long do you think the experiment needs to run before the Hawthorne effect you allude to is no longer a confounding effect? 2 years? 10? Longer?
The relevant Wikipedia page suggests that two months is about the upper limit for excitement-based productivity gains, so 1 year should be enough.
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#4"[...]a year-long trial that would divide some municipal workers into a test and control group"
We should need more scientific approaches like this to decision making in politics.
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#5"[...]a year-long trial that would divide some municipal workers into a test and control group" We should need more scientific approaches like this to decision making in politics.
Absolutely. There is a political problem here. Nobody wants to be in the control group. The fairness of the experiment doesn't lend itself well to the social-democratic thinking of the Nordics (everyone is supposed to be treated equally).
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#6I can see an argument a 6-hour day hurts workers. They get less pay while putting in more effort.
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...
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#7> It's unclear how, or if, a lunch break will factor into the scheme.
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.
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#8Six-hour days may be more productive, but this won't prove it one way or the other because: - 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 wi…
Also, those working 8 hours may be demotivated by knowing that the 6-hourers get exactly the same cash while needing to work less.
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#9How about four 8-hour days per week? Could they schedule this as the next experiment the following year?
Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day
#10Six-hour days may be more productive, but this won't prove it one way or the other because: - 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 wi…
Annoyingly, the article doesn't say why Kellogg's stopped their 30 hour work week. Is it unsustainable in the long term? Then it might be a good idea then if A) your business is creative and not an assembly line and B) you plan to sell your business before the strategy becomes unsustainable. They still had a small amount of departments working 30 hour weeks until 1985. When the company was handed over to new management in ~1947, it seems that the management immediately went on a crusade against 30 hour weeks without reason, creating incentives to work in 40 hour week departments and other things.[0]
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