Does more hours = higher productivity?
I first heard Joe O’Connor, CEO and Co-founder of Work Time Reduction, on a Forbes panel called “Beyond Burnout Band-Aids” and found what he had to say about the relationship between well-being and productivity enlightening. I asked him to speak with me about his work.
Joe defines burnout as exhaustion, disengagement, and lack of confidence. Thirty three percent or more of employees experience burnout during a work year - a chronic productivity issue. In collaboration with Infinite Potential, he conducted a study which found that 42% of people burned out working standard 40-hour workweeks. For those with reduced hours and/or shorter workweeks, the burnout rate was only 9% - a striking difference.
Joe says this shows leaders that if you can allow reduced hours, you significantly impact productivity. The more our work is reliant on critical thinking and problem solving, there is less relationship between hours worked correlating to higher productivity. Employee wellbeing correlates more to productivity.
He warns that a reduced work solution can’t be one-size-fits-all and needs to be designed very strategically. He favors a four-day workweek with 32 hours, though he says that’s not always achievable in the immediate term. In an organization that is very project-based, it can cause problems where someone isn’t around when needed. His company works with organizations to implement anything from a four-day workweek to changes in holiday policies to half-day Fridays, etc. When they work with an organization, they conduct an evaluation to determine their readiness to implement something new, challenges, and opportunities for improvement.
No matter what the appropriate solution is, leaders need to empower employees and make reduction in work time a bottom-up process improvement. You can work together to figure out how to make this work and sustain it.
Joe initially got involved with the shorter workweek movement when researching public service in Ireland in 2018. Ireland had established a new agreement where the workweek went down to four days (despite an increase in hours worked), and salary was reduced as well though expectations and responsibilities remained the same. I asked what the U.S. and Canada (where he now lives) can learn from Ireland and Europe when it comes to working less.
He feels there’s an opportunity for U.S. businesses as the regulatory regime for businesses is more flexible than in the EU, and it’s easier for companies to establish policies independently for reduced work time.
However you see it, the data is clear – productivity is higher when people work less. Let’s make it happen!
Photo credit: Denys Nevozhai