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Wharton Professor Says America Should Shorten the Work Day By 2 Hours (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the sign-me-up dept.

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, New York Times best-selling author, and The Wharton School's top professor, says Americans should work two hours less. Instead of the typical 9-to-5, people "should finish at 3pm," says Grant in a recent LinkedIn post. "We can be as productive and creative in 6 focused hours as in 8 unfocused hours." CNBC reports: In the LinkedIn post, Grant was weighing in on an Atlantic article about the time gap between when school and work days end, a bane for many parents. But it's not the first time Grant has given his stamp of approval to less work with more productivity. "Productivity is less about time management and more about attention management," Grant tweeted in July, highlighting an article about a successful four-day work week study. For the study, a New Zealand company adopted a four-day work week (at five-day pay) with positive results; the company saw benefits ranging from lower stress levels in employees to increased performance. In a recent blog post, billionaire Richard Branson also touted the success of a three-day or four-day work week. "It's easier to attract top talent when you are open and flexible," Branson said in the post. "It's not effective or productive to force them to behave in a conventional way."

"Many people out there would love three-day or even four-day weekends," said Branson. "Everyone would welcome more time to spend with their loved ones, more time to get fit and healthy, more time to explore the world."

39 of 456 comments (clear)

  1. What typical 9-5? by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Interesting

    More like 8-6 in much of the US, if not worse.

    I envy people in places like France and Quebec who take their free-time seriously -- closing time is 6 pm for many business that would stay open until 8 or even 10 pm in the US.

    1. Re:What typical 9-5? by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

      What's wrong with laziness? Why does your country need to have the next fart-app company for its citizens to be happy? Being "first" and "best" is over-rated -- living a happy life in mediocrity is also OK.

    2. Re: What typical 9-5? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We are moving to self-checkout and cashierless stores. So why close at all? My local grocery store is open 24/7. The lights are on motion sensors, so no electricity is being used unless someone is walking down that aisle. There is a skeleton crew doing restocking, but I just self-checkout so I don't bother them.

      Have you ever been to a 3rd world country? You will notice many many people selling a small collection of goods spread out on blankets or tables on the side of the road. This is WHY they are poor. Retail is unproductive and an economic dead end. It is a transaction cost, not a cost of producing goods or services. The larger the retail workforce, the poorer the country.

      The purpose of jobs is to produce goods and services, not "keeping people busy", and retail doesn't produce anything. The sooner we can eliminate most retail jobs, the better. This will free up labor for actual productive activities.

    3. Re:What typical 9-5? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What's wrong with laziness?

      Laziness has consequences. If you are willing to bear those consequences yourself, then feel free to be lazy.

      The problem is that in a democracy, the lazy can vote, and they vote for bread and circuses paid for with OPM* and deficit spending.

      They don't make the effort to understand the long term consequences of that because they are ... lazy.

      *OPM= Other People's Money

    4. Re: What typical 9-5? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You idiot, lots of people work weird hours and you are complaining about how you should work less but expect the world to provide convenience to you.

      Do you believe that stores that are open 24 hours a day have employees that work 24 hours a day?

      Sit down, and let me explain the concept of "work shifts" to you. If you'd ever had a job, you'd know what those are. Further, let me clue you in that 3 people working 8 hour shifts equal 24 hours, but 4 people working 6 hour shifts also equal 24 hours.

      If you need me to walk you through the math on this, let me know. I'm happy to help.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re: What typical 9-5? by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Cashier" is another term for "security guard" in a 24-hour cashierless store.

    6. Re: What typical 9-5? by FunkSoulBrother · · Score: 2

      yes. Jesus christ I'll pay more. It's fine if a McDonalds meal is $15, I'd be a lot healthier if it was.

    7. Re: What typical 9-5? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would love to be able to do that. I'm not an idiot who wants nuclear safety inspectors to be running at half staff and sixteen hour shifts every week, and skipping inspections completely at all two days a week.

      Maybe some idiots want taxi drivers to drive twenty four hour shifts every other day, and wants to take a second taxi to the emergency room after the first one crashes, where a surgeon will be on his 47th continuous hour with his hand in someone else's guts to get the shattered windshield glass out of their eyes.

      But as for me, I prefer to live in a civilization with some basic rules that make the employer criminally liable for those types of conditions, so as to deter that sort of reckless third party danger.

      To the non insane, non RW snowflake , easily triggered folks reading the article, it is clear the writer means for backend/non retail type "thought" industry workers. A brick layer can't lay bricks 33% faster as skillfully in six hours to match 8 hours of output etc.

      If your job is at a keyboard typing as fast as you can, with no interruptions, it doesn't apply to you either.

    8. Re: What typical 9-5? by fafalone · · Score: 2

      You're right, that certainly would be a major issue, because there's just no way 24 hours could be divided into 6 hour shifts smoothly. Just look at this wacky decimal my calculator told me it was... 4.00000000000. Such an odd number.

    9. Re:What typical 9-5? by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I am nothing, I am nobody and I am at peace, yeah most people have no idea what it means. You tell them the real opposite and they understand, well some of them. The actual opposite, 'I must be something, I must be somebody, I am always in conflict' (it has no finale it is a continuous demand). There is no balance between the two, choose one or the other, be at peace with yourself or be in conflict with everyone else.

      Don't listen to the psyshos, they are driven by shit genes, no autonomic empathic responses (it's a social learning tool from birth) and hence disconnected from the rest of us and a reduced range of human emotions, most often incapable of our happiness but certainly and most definitely, insanely jealous of it and as a result always striving to destroy it. Attack us, attack our children and attack our 'humane' societies, creating psychopathic capitalism instead to serve the ego, greed and destructive lusts of psychopaths.

      There is no happy and content for psychopaths, there is for the rest of us, either we reject them or they will strive to take away our happiness and contentment, to be content is to not need to be anything, to not need to be anyone and to be at peace (being content with who you are), bliss is being able to share that with other sane people.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    10. Re:What typical 9-5? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      And to top it off, when one reduces their work day by 2 hours, that means in a typical 5 day work week, they are also losing 10 hours of pay; unless they get a raise to compensate for the lower hours.

      In general workers have not realised productivity gains in their wages for around 40 years.

    11. Re: What typical 9-5? by terrycarlino · · Score: 2

      I work in such a 24/7 industry. For such a rotation you need three people fro each position plus an additional person to cover days off. If you want a schedule that actually allows workers to consistently get weekends off you need 6 workers for each position.

      That assumes at least a 40 hour work week. If you only have workers work 30 hours you would need at least 2 additional workers. Unlike other types of work productivity is not linked to worker hours, because workers are monitoring equipment that has a fix productivity. So there is no way fro workers to increase productivity. By definition productivity per worker would decrease.

      In the real world you can't just hire more people. Businesses (even non-profits like hospitals) have fixed budgets they must meet. If they hire more people the cost of production goes up and the charge for services must be increased. The same work for more money means lower productivity.

    12. Re: What typical 9-5? by terrycarlino · · Score: 2

      Yes 3 people working 8 hour shifts equals 24 hours and 4 people working 6 hour shifts equal 24 hours.

      If I have a labor budget of $24 a day/hour I can pay 3 people $8 and hour to work for their 8 hour shifts and I can pay 4 people $6 an hour to work for their 6 hour shift. However if I pay each 6 hour worker $8 an Hour my budget has increased to $32 a day/hour. To maintain my overhead at the same level I'll have to increase my prices to make up the difference, because in a fractional profit business like retail I'm sure not going to eat the cost.

      Of course each 8 hour worker makes $320 a week while even if I pay each 6 hour worker $8 an hour they'll still only makes $240 a week, for them to make $320 I'd have to pay them $10.60 an hour. This raises my employ budget to $42.40 a day/hour.

      Of course in the real world employee cost is more than just salary. Even if a company has no individual benefits cost there is Social Security, Unemployment insurance ,etc. This scales so that the more employees and the more you pay them the more this additional cost will be.

      And none of it is linked to productivity.

    13. Re: What typical 9-5? by stealth_finger · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In the real world you can't just hire more people. Businesses (even non-profits like hospitals) have fixed budgets they must meet. If they hire more people the cost of production goes up and the charge for services must be increased. The same work for more money means lower productivity.

      If your business isn't making enough money to pay enough people to do the job properly then you don't have a viable business and making up for it by having as few staff paid as little as possible doesn't do you any favours in the long run.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    14. Re:What typical 9-5? by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      How long of a list of reasons do you want? Because I can go on for quite a while, starting with "career advancement" to "taking your work responsibility seriously" to "wanting to keep your job in globalized environment".

    15. Re:What typical 9-5? by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      It has very little to do with "personal requirements", unless you're talking the tiny portion of elite workers that actually have negotiating leverage with their employer.

      It has to do mostly with competition which has been hyperdriven by globalisation. You're not longer just in competition with your neighbourhood workers, or even the workers in your city, or even your country. You're now in competition even with workers who work on a different continent.

      And so, if there's a person somewhere in the world who can do your job more flexibly and for less than you, you either man up and adjust or you lose your job.

    16. Re: What typical 9-5? by mpercy · · Score: 2

      They probably live in a country where some populist government (people's republic of ...) run by a charismatic strongman promising them salvation has seized farms (perhaps murdering the farmers in the process) and industries to be run by favored cronies. The farms stop producing food and the industries stop producing goods and the people live in fear of the government and/or the government supported gangs, the poor people will pile up.

    17. Re: What typical 9-5? by mpercy · · Score: 2

      There are headcount taxes and overhead, like unemployment insurance or ADP paycheck processing. Any benefits that you pay you are now paying to more employees, e.g. if you give each employee two weeks paid leave, going from 3 to 4 employees (3 * 8 = 24, 4 * 6 = 24) you have additional overhead of two weeks of pay per extra employee. Wages+benefits usually runs 1.25 to 1.4 times the wage rate. It costs money to hire employees, "Not every new hire will demand the entire process, but even an $8/hour employee can end up costing a company around $3,500 in turnover costs, both direct and indirect. [Investopedia]" due to things like training, recruiting, workplace integration (a new desk&chair, or extra uniforms for the additional people).

      Also, the people who had been working 8 hour shifts at $8/hour will probably actually be unhappy about getting their hours cut to 6, as they face a 25% decrease in take-home pay. Unless you want us to increase their pay so that they still make the same in 6 hours as they were making in 8...by which time you've raised the cost of each employee by 25% so that you can pay the new 4th employee.

    18. Re:What typical 9-5? by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      Good on you. Hope you're not planning on getting any raises or promotions, and don't mind being the first to be made redundant when next depression occurs unless you're in the tiny minority of the people who have a clear negotiating advantage over their employees.

    19. Re:What typical 9-5? by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can understand your view completely. Hence the way I ended the post you're answering to. The problem remains that globalisation has already progressed well beyond "factory workers", and there are now a lot of well educated engineers in places like China, who would love to do the work you would rather not do because you want to spend time with your family.

      And while they're at it, they would also love to do the rest of your work. For less money than you are getting.

      Do you see the problem?

  2. Also, get rid of "exempt" jobs... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you work > 40 hr/wk, you should be entitled to additional compensation, regardless of salary. Fair's fair. Should discourage employers from abusing knowledge workers.

    1. Re:Also, get rid of "exempt" jobs... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

      Yep, it would be nice for a government to actually look out for its citizens' interests instead of incarcerating 1% of them or sending them to war.

    2. Re:Also, get rid of "exempt" jobs... by q_e_t · · Score: 2

      I suspect the lack of funding for mental health facilities has a lot more to do with it than the ACLU.

  3. Re:Go for it by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good. Then mandate it, or at least mandate overtime for ALL workers who are required to work over 40 hrs per week. If people are taken away from their families and lives, they should be compensated for it appropriately. And having to pay 1.5x or 2x time should encourage employers to hire more workers vs having unreasonable expectations from their existing workforce.

  4. Two things that stuck with me... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Informative

    Working hours vs. productivity

    Working hours vs. premature deaths

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  5. Yes but America ran with it by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You do realize that you can thank one single company for the 8 hour workday, right?

    Yes I know, but the results are telling - the U.S. has been pretty much an economic powerhouse ever since, and more R&D seems to get accomplished here.

    Other countries could have copied us but so far they all seem to prefer to fall into decline...

    Now what DOESN'T make sense is our incredibly rigid school system.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. Poor assumption by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "We can be as productive and creative in 6 focused hours as in 8 unfocused hours."
    Assuming people will focus more if they only work 6 hours a day.

    Also assuming when people work has no impact.
    A lot of people work the hours they do because they're providing a service to customers over that time period. No matter how hard they work for 6 hours won't let them answer a phone between 3 and 5 when they're not working.

    1. Re:Poor assumption by Zaelath · · Score: 2

      No matter how hard they work for 6 hours won't let them answer a phone between 3 and 5 when they're not working.

      So employ more people? No one does anything useful with a call after 3 anyway, unless it's in a 24/7 service industry.

    2. Re:Poor assumption by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Assuming people will focus more if they only work 6 hours a day.

      That is a safe assumption. A lot of people are quite mental disasters towards the end of their day.

  7. Lunch by onyxruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no such thing as a free lunch. I think this must be the most hard to learn lesson in human history. The second must be the law of supply and demand.

    People keep trying to come up with ways to get around having to pay for things. Countless millions have been subject to poverty and starvation because some fool somewhere thought they could legislate there way around basic laws of economics (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Soviet Union etc.).

    You can't create something from nothing. Somebody has to pay for it with finite resources.

    We humans keep trying to cheat the basic laws of economics, time and again, thinking that surely this time must be the time things will automagically work. How many millions will starve to death before this kind of foolishness is considered a crime against humanity?

    1. Re:Lunch by hjf · · Score: 5, Informative

      People used to work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, from children to their deaths.
      Then we negotiated the 8 hour work day.
      Then we negotiated the 5 day work week.

      It's actually very simple: if people work all day every day, they have no free time. If they have no free time, they don't buy things. If they don't buy things, there are no jobs.
      If people don't work, they have no money. If they have no money, they don't buy things. If they don't buy things, there are no jobs.

      There is an equilibrium point that maximize "people working" and "people consuming".

      Seriously, Americans surprise me with their "leave it to the market" attitudes. Like for example "no vacations mandated by law". Yeah the free market doesn't solve that: Walmart doesn't give you vacations. Why would it, when it can, you now, ... not?

      You guys have no vacations and no holidays. You "work hard" and your living standard is inferior to an european's, who have 1 month vacations and a few holidays sprinkled around the year.

    2. Re:Lunch by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      Europeans have 1 month vacations because America grants Europe a massive $150 billion in subsidies in the form of horribly unfair trade deals. Moreover America pays for European defense, saving their countries another ton of cash. Imagine the nice things Americans could have if they didn't have to pay for a continent of ungrateful jerks.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:Lunch by Uberbah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Europeans have 1 month vacations because America grants Europe a massive $150 billion in subsidies in the form of horribly unfair trade deals.

      America is the richest country in the history of the world. Try telling us again how one month vacations would cost toooo much.

      Moreover America occupies Europe

      FTFY. Russia has a smaller economy than Spain, and their entire defense budget is a fraction of the last increase to Pentagon pork. All those U.S. military bases across Europe are not for defense.

      They're for empire.

    4. Re:Lunch by jareth-0205 · · Score: 2

      Europeans have 1 month vacations because America grants Europe a massive $150 billion in subsidies in the form of horribly unfair trade deals. Moreover America pays for European defense, saving their countries another ton of cash. Imagine the nice things Americans could have if they didn't have to pay for a continent of ungrateful jerks.

      Are you *fucking* kidding me? European holiday is paid for by America. Yeah. Sure.

      American military is several times bigger than it needs to be, it's that big because American *wants* a big military. Politically and socially you *love* your military. No politician can ever reduce it, not because of the rest of the world, but because the American people wouldn't support it.

      You're honestly telling me that if European countries upped their military then Trump would cut the US's? Bullshit, you don't believe that, nobody does.

    5. Re:Lunch by hjf · · Score: 2

      How can you be so ignorant? You're just a few keystrokes away from finding out everything you just spewed is bullshit.

    6. Re:Lunch by jareth-0205 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Good work ignoring everything I said. I'll say it again - the US has a large military because it wants one, not because the rest of the works wants it to have one.

  8. What about the money? by Pfhorrest · · Score: 2

    I'm free to work fewer hours per day right now if I want to. But I'm scrambling as fast as I possibly can to dig myself out of the hole I was born into before I die, so I don't. Are you going to force me to work less for less pay? Cause I don't want that; I could have that right now if I did. Are you going to somehow make me paid the same for less work? I don't know what magic you think will accomplish that but if you've got something bring it on.

    --
    -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
    "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
  9. White collar bias by ka9dgx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the job shop / small manufacturing world I now inhabit, it takes about 1/2 hour or so to get everything going in the morning, and about the same time to shut it all down at the end of the day. So, we'd get about 70% of our current productivity if we took this approach. There are many other types of work, as stated above (ER, Medical care, Service industry), where you'd have hire 33% more workers to get coverage. Where's all that money going to come from to pay all and train all these new hires?

    Some old white dude (like me) probably wrote this in a comfy office.

  10. Re:Yeah I work for a living too and I manage peopl by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    As a manager you really don't have to work more hours then your employees.
    Besides even as a manager or even a boss, there probably is a few hours of downtime, where you just don't have the energy doing any work. So you either goof off in in your office. Or wander the cubes jabbing with your employees telling yourself it is some sort of team building or raising spirits. While all you are doing is distracting them because you don't want to do your work.

    However to note, if those other employees who are working less hours, means 2 less hours you need to work managing them.

    As you move to management, you should learn to drop much of the fine detail work, that is what the employees are for. You need to focus on the bigger picture and make sure the employees are going in that direction. The further up you go the bigger the picture, and less on the details.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.