The United States adopted the 40 hour work week in 1938 in order to establish some sort of control over employee safety and health, at a time when child labor and extremely poor, unregulated working conditions were rampant. Nowadays, middle class workers aren’t as concerned with experiencing a mine explosion as they are with having a better work-life balance. People want more free time to spend with their families and to partake in personal interests. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States ranks 32nd out of 36 in the amount of time “devoted to leisure and personal care” per worker. The U.S. is also one of the only developed countries without a paid parental leave policy in place. Is this a problem?
The 2015 North American Workplace Survey stated that 53% of employees report feeling “overworked and burnt out” as a result of work, which could mean decreased productivity. Many believe that a switch from a fixed 40-hour work week to a flexible schedule is the next step to improving employee conditions in the U.S. Many European countries such as the Netherlands operate on a 4-day work week, allowing more focus on personal lives. A 2014 study from John Pencavel showed that during an average workday, additional output of work stopped increasing at around 5 hours; by 7 output is dropping rapidly, and output would be at zero by the 11th hour.
Although some entrepreneurs and start-up businesses are operating with more flexible time schedules for their employees, maybe its time to get rid of the “40-hour work week” status quo. Instead, offering flexible scheduling for employees will increase productivity and well-being at the same time, and in turn improving the company itself. With the United-States’ results driven nature, it just makes sense that we should be looking to see what helps the employees work best, not forcing a work schedule on them.
A good experiment to test this claim would be to have one group of workers work as much as they felt necessary to get the job done and the other group to do the typical work week. My thought is that if a person is working long days eventually they just procrastinate and try to pass the time. More efficient work would be accomplished if a person was allowed to work as much or as little as they needed.
your*** (oops, typo)
I think you’re claim makes a lot of sense, since I have heard many adults say that they feel that they work too much. Perhaps the laws implemented in the 1930s are a bit outdated now, and it might be best if they were able to work less. There are lots of jobs out there where people work crazy hours, plus overtime. If you’d like to know more about this, check this articleout!
I 100% agree that working more hours does not increase worker productivity. If you are anything like me you put it off cause you figure oh it can be done later or tomorrow. My father has spent his whole life traveling for work. He is the guy who’s phone always just so happens to go off during dinner and is on full sound and attached to his hip on every vacation. It seems as though they never give him a day off. I think the US needs more time for leisure without having to worry about where their next paycheck will come from if they do take time off. Even when they do they can’t enjoy it because of some of the worries. I found an article on this that you could read up on by clicking here .