Will working a shorter week make people more productive?

Read on to find out what experts are saying about this.

According to a report in the New York Times, employees in the Service Industry feel that Businesses are able to reduce the number of employees and still deliver their service due to advancement in technology and software. The employees who are remaining need to work more than their regular working hours or make themselves available, “on-call”, at different times.

Do working long hours with only 2 weekend days per week mean achieving more?

According to experts, working a shorter week will make employees happier and even more productive.

Longer working weeks with long working hours lead to an increase in stress-related illness, which will impact negatively on employee productivity. With shorter working weeks, employers are seeing a better work-life balance in their employee’s life which ultimately leads to improved productivity and morale.

In shorter working weeks, employees will work longer hours during the days they are working, for example, three 12 hour days. With the remaining four days employees would have time for relaxation and personal life, without taking a hit on their monthly salary.

Quentin Fottrell (a personal finance reporter) in MarketWatch calculated that whilst Germany works nearly 45% fewer annual hours than Greece, it is 70% more productive, and annual German salaries are higher too.

So, is working shorter week really the solution?

Many a time employees have their 5-day week work carried over the weekend to meet the deadlines. They are totally exhausted on Monday mornings.

In such cases, we need to think if this is a symptom of a longer than a necessary working week or a symptom of the inability of the employee or a symptom of low employee morale.

All this said, before we start thinking of working shorter weeks, we need to understand the nature of our business at its best and then need to decide on the working hours that would benefit both the employee and the employer.
Whatever be the situation, if we love our jobs, and trust the organization we are working for, then we will put the necessary hours to get the job done.

Register with us to see how you can define the non-working days for your organization and how you can automate all your HR related processes.

What is your take on working days and productivity? I would be happy to read your experience in the comments section.