10 ms·

Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six-hour working day

• kfk 11y ago
  So, they work less, but they had to hire more people, at the same salary. Operating Costs are going up. Who is paying for that? Tax payers of course! Most of which have to work more than 6 hrs to pay for those kind of politics.
  • cjgk 11y ago
    Tax payers like me, who will grow old and need those carers to be doing a good job. Good use of taxpayer money!
    • dogma1138 11y ago
      They also need a sustainable pension and savings plan, if you divert too much taxes out of that you'll end up actually needing that care much more than you think. Some of those systems don't work in the long run, the rent control in Sweden results in each available apartment getting thousands of requests with people actually waiting decades to get an apartment, and this isn't some low income housing this is just because the majority of the apartments in places like Stockholm are rent controlled and managed by the government.
      • tormeh 11y ago
        Rent control, and price controls more generally, are stupid. It doesn't solve the problem of demand being far higher than supply, which is why it never really works. I just get sad every time I see it.
        • hwstar 11y ago
          In the UK, there is Council Housing, this may be a good alternative to rent control because it provides housing at a nominal cost and gives the private landlords some competition. The only problem with this type of offering is it will stick in the craw of the American psyche who abhor the government competing against the private sector. Rents do get bid up due to things like the minimum wage rising. This is because the power relationship between landlord and tenant is heavily skewed in favour of the landlord. The employee/employer relationship also suffers from the same disease. Disclosure: I'm a US/UK dual citizen, and a landlord myself.
          • 13thLetter 11y ago
            "because it provides housing at a nominal cost and gives the private landlords some competition." Sincere question as I don't know much about the UK rental market: why aren't the private landlords in this segment of the market competing with each other? Is it difficult to build additional rental housing cheaply enough?
  • papapra 11y ago
    But do you agree that for some white collar jobs, if done efficiently, 6 hours per day is enough? I would prefer to have 6 hours day and be paid less.
    • Kiter1 11y ago
      Absolutely. 'Moving the needle' doesn't require long days, instead it requires discipline an focus on doing the one thing that will move your project forward. From experience at large companies I think most people waste 4 to 6 hours a day in pointless meetings, dealing with low ROI work items or looking at Facebook. Some of the self-made wealthiest people I know certainly didn't work 8 hours every day to get there, instead they were focused and masters of delegation and emotional intelligence.
  • yardie 11y ago
    I've rarely met anyone that has actually "worked" a full 8 hours. The marathon work days where you actually do 8, and more likely 16, are few and far between. Once you exclude the coffee breaks, snack breaks, stretch breaks, brain breaks, etc. you easily get back to 6 hours. Hell if you are on here and at work you are technically not working. Most managers will overlook the occasional reddit or YC page load because they know it's hard to "crush it" for hours straight.
    • impl 11y ago
      This article is about nurses, though. In the US many ER nurses work 12 hour shifts and they obviously don't have the option of personal downtime. It's likely that as "computer" people we're already reaping much of the benefit discussed.
      • yardie 11y ago
        This article is about nurses in care homes. They aren't under the same constraint as an ER nurse. Reason why ER nurses work 12 is continuance of care. You're better off being looked after by 2 shifts who are familiar with your case rather than 3 or 4. More people just add complexity
    • Excavator 11y ago
      In Sweden "work" entails 8hours + 1hour set aside for obligatory break time. Is it different in the states? Also, I can't see how 6hours would mean no stretch/brain breaks.
      • svachalek 11y ago
        In the US, "work" is split into "exempt" and "non-exempt" status. "Non-exempt" workers are paid by the hour and have mandatory benefits if they work 40 hours and overtime pay if they work more than 40, so most employers will aim for 35 or so. "Exempt" workers, which is most of us in the tech industry, are paid a salary and have essentially no limit to the hours that may be asked of us.
  • grecy 11y ago
    > Who is paying for that? Tax payers of course! I'm happy when "my" tax dollars are spent making my life better. Isn't that the whole point? (Obviously, this will work when everyone in the country has a 6 hour work week)
    • mgraczyk 11y ago
      No. You may not agree, but I believe that I am better than the government at deciding how to spend my money to make myself happier. Government spending occasionally benefits from scale that I can't achieve on my own (parks, better roads, etc). However, this is not one of those cases.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Excellent! That's how democracy works. If you don't like how things are run, you can a) try to change them or b) find a venue more congruent with your personal beliefs.
      • littletimmy 11y ago
        It is not your money. It is the money that the government allows you to have. You live in a society, and you wouldn't have money without society. We have as much right over that money as you do.
        • ahomescu1 11y ago
          Money is both a "unit of account" and "medium of exchange". You can certainly have both of those without government. In some societies, people used seashells, salt, gold coins, or many other things as money. Bitcoin certainly counts as a "non-government money". Since money is used as a medium of exchange, it's essentially a placeholder for your labor (when you receive it from your employer/customers as payment) or value provided to others. It is arguable whether society has as much right over an individual's labor as he/she does, I think they don't (while society may have a contribution, it might be significantly below 50%). One last and minor thing we'll have to disagree on: I don't think government equals society. An individual can be a part of society without being part of government, and I also believe government sometimes represents its own interests at the expense of society.
  • asgard1024 11y ago
    > Who is paying for that? That's the best part - it's free! Due to increases in productivity (better technology), people can work less overall.
    • dogma1138 11y ago
      No it's not free, it's also been tested in fields that require human labor which can not be replaced or supplemented with automation e.g. hospice nursing. While productivity might have increased although I've tried to go back to the actual studies to verify it and i couldn't find anything to support it it's not free. They are still being paid the same (per hour salary was increased) and they had to hire more staff, one of the big pluses they've reported is that it was much easier for them to recruit new employees but that's not something unique considering they've just given everyone a 25% raise by mandating that they should work only 6 hours. So overall their operational expenses have went up, by how much well hard to say, they've managed to increase their workforce by almost 30% so that's a flat out 30% increase in operational costs, since recruiting and maintaining an employee is considerably more expensive (on boarding process & training costs, more heads means more benefits have to be paid out) than paying overtime then the operational costs have probably even risen more than a flat 30%. This is a government funded experiment and so it the employer so who ended up paying the bill well the Swedish people, at least those who pay into the system since now Sweden has the lowest (actual) pay-in ratio of all countries within the EAA and no much north sea oil and gas to cover for it like their richer neighbor Norway.
      • asgard1024 11y ago
        What I am saying is that it is free for the society as a whole; redistribution within the society may still occur. Let's take a simple example. You have a village and someone plants an apple tree. Everybody who wants an apple has to pay to the owner (planter). Now let's say (to make it less politically controversial) that the owner dies, and the village decides that anyone in the village can take, say, 10 apples per month. I would then say the apples are free, wouldn't you? It perfectly fits the definition of the word. And this is analogous to technological innovation. Someone spent time creating this innovation in the past, and the products of this innovation can be free, you don't have to pay anyone to use it, they are already dead. So I have shown you, I hope, that free things can appear "out of thin air" in the economy. Then it's just a matter of social consensus how to redistribute the free things, for example, people can decide that they will just work two hours less.
  • belorn 11y ago
    By switched to two six-hour shifts with full pay and no break for lunch you get more efficient use out of machines and buildings. Add that with increased productivity per employee, lowered costs to sickness and injury, higher personal retention, and the increased operation costs are directly paid by the increased production and decreased costs over time.
  • s73v3r 11y ago
    Are operating costs going up? While they have to hire more people, they don't have to replace people as often, and they don't have as many mistakes/errors, which can be expensive.
  • odonnellryan 11y ago
    These people also pay taxes. Sure there probably still added tax burden but it isn't so black and white. It does a few things: 1) More jobs = more spending = more taxes in indirect ways (businesses) 2) Less stress on other public programs, such as welfare (if these people aren't employed, who is paying for their xyz?)
• jobu 11y ago
  Nursing is a _hard_ job, and tired/stressed people make mistakes. I would be interested in seeing data on patient outcomes before and after this change.
  • Osmium 11y ago
    I was reading an informed opinion recently that longer shifts are much better for nursing, in that there's a lot of lost efficiency and lost knowledge during shift changes. Perhaps limiting the total number of hours worked in a week, rather than the length of any one individual shift, might be better? This person's opinion was that tiredness was not as big an issue as it's made out to be -- though I'm personally skeptical of that, and would be surprised if statistics back it up, it does seem to be a view I hear from some medical professionals.
    • Retric 11y ago
      There is two ways to deal with that problem, either fewer handoffs or better handoffs. I suspect focusing on more efficient handoffs and practicing more may be better than simply having longer shifts. Because 6h vs 12h shifts might cut handoff mistakes in half, but with 6h shifts good record keeping becomes more obviously important, and fewer things need to be communicated at handoff aka 6h worth of info vs 12h worth of info.
      • pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        Shifts (being groups of workers that start and finish at a particular time en masse) themselves are probably contrary to good practice wrt patient care. If the whole shift changes then it seems there would be a substantial discontinuity in care; you'd want people to have staggered work patterns so in any hour there is always a substantial proportion of staff who were there the previous hour. Unless you have many-to-one carers-to-patients then it wouldn't matter so much.
    • arnsholt 11y ago
      It seems that some medical professionals think they're super-human. A statistic I've seen cited was that the same number of mistakes were made during the first eight hours of a shift as during the one hour following those first eight. Basically, the rules apply to medicine like everywhere else: productivity (or whatever you'd want to call it in this case), drops off sharply after eight hours.
• malanj 11y ago
  These results are super interesting, but I wonder how much can be attributed to the Hawthorn Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect). I.e. will this result be generalizable and stable over time.
  • Dylan16807 11y ago
    I'd expect the Hawthorne Effect to lead to more stress...
• douche 11y ago
  When I was working a blue-collar, industrial job, I would be happy to work 10 or 12 hour days. Usually the schedule was 4 10s, with the Mondays and Fridays rotating to give a four-day weekend every other week. Of course, longer days meant overtime pay, too, if it added up to more than 40 hours in the week. I was also commuting about two hours a day, so shorter days didn't really give me any extra free time (downside of government holidays was that they only paid 8 hours, so you'd end up still working 4 days, just for 8 hours each instead of 10). Working as a programmer now, I find that I mostly can put in about 4 hours of real work in a day, before my brain is mush. Although there are other blessed days when I get in the groove and have plenty of work to do with no interruptions, and I might work steady for 12 or 15 hours straight. It takes something of a miracle for this to occur, though, since two or more 30 minute meetings, or having to bounce around a couple different projects doing email support can wreck any attempt at getting into a flow for the day. Physical labor might be strenuous, but I generally find it to be less exhausting than mental labor.
  • agumonkey 11y ago
    I fondly remember digging trenches[1] in a hot summer. It was the most painful thing I ever did, but I approached levels of zen I rarely have now. Everybody is built differently, but there's something deeply good about physical exhaustion. When you know the job, you get in flow easily. When done you feel all reset, the next day you feel a bit sore but it's the good kind, you even anticipate it. [1] And if some kind of tasks are too brutal, there's always swimming (or even qigong).
  • lordnacho 11y ago
    You may only be typing code or reading docs 4 hours a day, but I'll bet you do useful thinking when you're not at your desk.
  • blazespin 11y ago
    Mental labor is hard, but learning I find fairly easy and quite relaxing. I only do about 2 hours or so productive mental labor / output a day, the rest of it I spend self training and learning. I honestly can't imagine how far I would be behind my peers if I didn't do that. Sometimes I do a fair amount of training / mentoring for junior engineers as well. That can be pretty relaxing too and productive for the company.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• stefs 11y ago
  after almost burning out at my previous job (mo-thu 9 hrs + 1 hour break, so 10 hours at the office, friday until 3pm) i decided on a 30-hour week at my current job, 5x6 hours - with aliquot salary of course and flexible work time. i couldn't be happier. sure, i'm not earning as much as i could (though i earn as much for 30hrs as for 42hrs at my previous job - living expenses are higher though, but it's enough to get me through the day), but the overall increase in quality and happiness is well worth it. i'm more concentrated and productive, instead of just looking at the clock and wishing for the bell to ring. if i can't concentrate at all i leave earlier and when i'm motivated and productive i stay longer - win/win situation for me and my employer, i'd say. i'm pretty sure i get more work done in those 6hrs than during the 9 hour day on my earlier job, and more important: i don't completely despair in the evening, close to tears because i don't know how to get through another day in the office. to the contrary: i love the work, i love the job (i also love the coffee machine and ping pong table in the cellar).
  • lisivka 11y ago
    I am applying for 4 hour job with option to work more, when needed (4-6 hours per day, sometimes 8 hours). I producing better code and I still working faster than others (moreover, our customers prefers my code), so I have 2x higher rate, so my salary is a bit higher, not lower.
  • rectang 11y ago
    How did you find or negotiate such an arrangement? There seem to be very few non-40-hour software engineering positions available, even though many of us would happily trade away some salary for quality of life.
    • senderista 11y ago
      Work in the public sector (in my case a university).
    • brianwawok 11y ago
      Small companies can be flexible. Large companies have to deal with rules written by people too far removed from your boss.
• daxfohl 11y ago
  This could be inverting cause and effect. Perhaps those looking for 6-hour days are the ones more likely to want a long-term job. Those wanting "the next big thing" will work long hours until either it hits or they move on in a year.
• a3voices 11y ago
  Much of software engineering (and probably other white collar work) is subconscious thought that is invisibly churning in your brain. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to speed it up. So working more hours isn't helpful because a lot of the delay is waiting for your subconscious.
  • daxfohl 11y ago
    https://twitter.com/codequalified/status/627113899754717184 https://twitter.com/codequalified/status/627113899754717184
  • jschwartzi 11y ago
    You're right. Sadly most of us do not work software development jobs. We work in typing factories. The difference is that a software development job is about finishing the program on deadline. Instead we're expected to be present so that we can be typing in some kind of editor most of the time, to remind the rest of the product team that software work is happening as they speak. The engineering manager can ask us to be present for more time, but I can't bring myself to physically think for more than 6 hours at a stretch, so it leads to the first and last 2 hours of the day basically being wasted time. I'd be more enthusiastic about it if we were solving interesting problems or learning new tools, but I'm basically grinding away at the exact same problems I was solving a year ago, so there's nothing interesting about the work. It's just a typing factory.
  • IndianAstronaut 11y ago
    I get most of my ideas when I take breaks.
• blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  How would this model work for a startup where people often put in 60+ hours a week? It's fine to let public workers like the geriatric nurses in the article do 6-hour shifts as long as you have the budget to hire extra staffers to cover the lost hours. And, of course, that extra budget comes out of the pockets of private sector workers and businesses in taxes.
• hashberry 11y ago
  I used job hop every 1-2 years looking for the perfect work environment. I couldn't find one until I started working as remote developer where the only thing that matters are results. My personal turnover is down: I've had the same job for seven years. If you leave at the same time every day YOU ARE A SEAT WARMER. I remember sitting in a cubicle having completed all my work for the day, but couldn't leave at 3pm because it would look bad. That was my own personal hell because efficiency did not reward me with more personal time.
  • Spearchucker 11y ago
    YOU ARE A SEAT WARMER. Yeah or maybe you have kids.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • dikaiosune 11y ago
      I read that the opposite way -- GP doesn't seem to be talking about staying late, but rather leaving early.
    • jazzyk 11y ago
      The accusation is against the company, which forces you to conform to the clock. [Admittedly, the poster worded it a bit awkwardly]