19 ms·

Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

• JamesBarney 10y ago
  I imagine the optimal working day depends on the work one is doing. I used to work 8 hour shifts at Circuit City and leave with plenty of energy. But 8 hours of solid coding leaves me exhausted. I'm more curious to see the results of Amazon's 30 hr work week because I believe that includes developers.
  • plandis 10y ago
    I believe Amazons program was something like come to work from 10:00 to 14:00 Mon-Fri. The problem with this is that I think it's a lot easier to be pressured to stay longer over the course of a week than if you only worked 3 days a week.
    • Declanomous 10y ago
      This is why I like Google's version, where you can work on personal projects. You are still around if people need you, but you can work on other things as well rather than burning out trying to work on one thing for 40+ hours a week.
      • shostack 10y ago
        Last I heard that 20% time thing was pretty dead in reality, or that it became 120% time, no?
      • rogerdpack 10y ago
        I heard once anecdotally that google side projects are sometimes "supposed to be work related" so not quite as free as you'd imagine, FWIW...or perhaps they're not dunno never worked there.
        • Declanomous 10y ago
          I think they are supposed to be work related, but that's still a change of pace. There are things I want to fix at my job that will never be fixed because it isn't anybody's job, and nobody would let you mess around with it because it would be circumventing the normal decision making process. It would be really nice to just say "I'm just trying something out," without needing to schedule an hour-long meeting with 8 people to create a roadmap.
          • WWLink 10y ago
            Ouch. I feel lucky to have enough autonomy I can blow a few hours out of a week "just trying something out" without being grilled why I wasted a few hours over it. If I were being grilled I'd consider a new job.
  • mordocai 10y ago
    And truthfully, it is going to depend on the person to at least some extent as well. IMO, anything that doesn't include being at work as part of your actual job duties should have no number of required work hours. You either get enough work done or you don't. If you aren't getting the expected amount of work done, then you'll eventually get fired. If you can out perform everyone else on the team and work 8 hours a week, so be it(just don't expect to get any brownie points when it comes raise time unless you put in more time). Things like retail/food service are obviously things that require being at work certain hours so talking about shortening hours for that time of work is productive. For creative work/management/executive work though, I think we should move to a more flexible approach.
    • at-fates-hands 10y ago
      When I was in sales/marketing, it was all about hitting your quota. If you were good, your boss didn't care what you were doing as long as you hit your quota every month. It gave the higher performers the leeway to work when they wanted to, and also give an incentive to the average sales people to up their game to be able to do the same. As a developer, a majority of the companies I worked at there was no incentive to go above and beyond, even at the end of the year in terms of bonuses. Sure, the guy that was burning himself out for that extra 1% yearly raise usually got it, but it never made any sense to me to work that hard for a few more pennies over the year. Now in my 30's, my attitude is to get my stuff done and stay off my managers radar. My sanity and work/life balance is too important at this point in my life.
      • stinos 10y ago
        your boss didn't care what you were doing as long as you hit your quota every month Where I work (software/hardware for research) the basic principle is actually not different: boss doesn't really care what I'm doing as long as I'm not unhappy and the stuff which needs to get done gets done in time. Sure there are no fixed periodic deadlines or money-based quota, but the same principle nonetheless. I wouldn't want to work in another way because of all the freedom it gives you. I do see the same 'drawback' regarding carreer opportunities etc but the older I get the less I care. I earn enough money to sustain my lifestyle so yeah I'm definitely not going to work my ass off just to earn a bit more or get a better position, as I know that won't make me any happier anyway.
  • peatmoss 10y ago
    In the article though, the benefits to nurses weren't disputed. It was a success from a quality of life perspective. Costs were the issue. Possible that costs might vary from role to role, but that's less satisfying if the goal is to improve life.
    • rqebmm 10y ago
      It also mentioned patient care was improved, which is important because it establishes that the gains went beyond the employees who got two extra hours of free time. That could establish the groundwork for some similar studies in different disciplines where perhaps the costs don't increase in the same ways.
  • xiaoma 10y ago
    That's interesting. 8 solid hours of coding leaves me wanting to go for a run or go out singing with my friends. OTH, back when I was paining houses and hauling ladders around all day, I felt like sitting down in front of a computer for the rest of the evening after finally getting home.
    • tluyben2 10y ago
      Me too; not that I often code 8 solid hours (I take out time to walk in the mountains and cook for instance) but when I anything more than 4 hours solid I have tons of energy. After 3 hours of meetings however, not so much.
  • simonebrunozzi 10y ago
    > I'm more curious to see the results of Amazon's 30 hr work week because I believe that includes developers. I hope you're joking, otherwise you don't know Amazon at all. (source: I worked at AWS for six years)
    • RandomOpinion 10y ago
      I believe he's referring to Amazon's pilot program for part-time employees doing 30 hour workweeks: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/26/amazon-is-piloting-teams-with-a-30-hour-work-week/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/26...
      • ncallaway 10y ago
        Funny to see this now. I left Amazon about 3 years ago, because there was no career path advancement for fewer hours. I would've stayed at Amazon longer if at the end of the year instead of paying me more money they would've been willing to just make me work fewer hours.
• vesinisa 10y ago
  I am under the impression that 6-hour days are widely adopted in France. Anyone know more of it?
  • donmatito 10y ago
    This is completely false. French workers (at mid-management level and above - not hourly workers) work long hours. Longer than German and Nordic countries, for example, where leaving at 5pm is the norm and leaving later is more a sign of poor work planning than of dedication. I think workday hours are similar to American employees, but work less in the weekends and have more vacations.
    • toomuchtodo 10y ago
      > French workers (at mid-management level and above - not hourly workers) work long hours. Why?
      • donmatito 10y ago
        Why what? What do they work long hours? I don't know, "culture".
    • riskneural 10y ago
      Leaving at 5pm is the norm in Germany only in very particular circumstances. Most people I know are stuck until 18:30 or so.
      • donmatito 10y ago
        Interesting. I worked for a multinational, we had a (brilliant) German intern who worked in our FR headquarters, very long hours. Then she moved back to Germany in a local division, where she was always the last one closing the lights, by a long shot. It might be the effect of headquarter vs local company, perhaps, but 5pm is what I saw in most plants in Germany.
      • lintiness 10y ago
• mhurron 10y ago
  They're abandoning it because of an obvious requirement? Did someone not realize that in a 24 hour operation that consists of physical activities, cutting hours would require more people to carry the same workload?
  • stephanheijl 10y ago
    Then again, the hours that were cut also wouldn't have to be paid to the people not working them. In a perfect situation this would have led to higher employment numbers and happier employees. However, the Bloomberg source[1] also mentions that pay was not cut, which led to the overhead costs. You are right that this consequence could've been seen from miles away. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/swedish-six-hour-workday-trial-runs-into-trouble-too-expensive https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/swedish-s...
    • jahaja 10y ago
      > You are right that this consequence could've been seen from miles away. Which is why this is very close to just propaganda against a 6h work day.
      • crististm 10y ago
        I'm commenting on rebootthesystem comment which is flagged and dead. I don't understand why - he makes a perfectly valid and coherent point.
        • poooogles 10y ago
          The language used in his comment has no place on Hacker News [1]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
          • sdfjn23k 10y ago
            so much bullshit. I've seen accounts disabled because they posted 'generic' views. That's nowhere in your bullsit mod policy. Fuck mods
• stinos 10y ago
  the costs outweigh the benefits Well, if you put a low enough price on people's happiness, health, and quality of work, then yes I guess. Anyway: I hope the people involved in the pilot and happily doing 6 hours shifts now, won't take it too hard if the pilot should be stopped and they're back to 8 hour shifts.
  • Freak_NL 10y ago
    They are now back to 8 hour shifts, as the two year pilot ended with the close of 2016.
  • giarc 10y ago
    The trial was for 68 employees and cost $1.7 million USD (they had to hire additional staff). Imagine you took that $1.7m and spent it on those 68 employees. $25,000/employee would go a long way to increasing happiness with perks etc.
    • rogerdpack 10y ago
      Yes I suppose the real question is would those employees "elect" for a 6 hour day with a 25% pay cut, or not...that would give you something of a feeling for whether the benefits out weight cost, as it were...
      • giarc 10y ago
        As mentioned elsewhere in this message, it depends on the job really. Nursing staff in a nursing home might benefit more from shorter shifts. Someone that is sitting at a desk taking phone calls or entering data might benefit from a bit longer of a day. I'm more in the latter camp and my colleagues and I have been talking about doing 4x 9.5 hour days and just rotating who gets Friday's off vs the rest of the week. I could easily come a bit earlier, leave a bit later and get tons of benefits from 3 day weekends.
      • rogerdpack 10y ago
        Though I suppose if there are performance improvements, it might be more of a 15% pay cut, or 10% [?]
• acd 10y ago
  If you did the study in the IT-industry. What would the result be if you would measure code commits and code quality for a large sample of programmers with [4,6,8] working hours?
  • Shivetya 10y ago
    I would think you have to extend that to number of hours worked prior and rest intervals. I am quite sure that a number of developers can put out good code is a short crunch that has long days, it is sustained output that I would like to see.
  • jmcomets 10y ago
    In general it's difficult to measure the productivity of developers, since the a single commit can mean years of maintenance. Measuring the code quality is equally hard: linting and code conventions will only get you so far, designs need to be reviewed by humans. In short: http://nesma.org/2015/01/programmer-productivity-is-waste-of-time http://nesma.org/2015/01/programmer-productivity-is-waste-of...
• mikaeluman 10y ago
  Wow. The sad state of journalism... and of critique from readers at this site. Obviously bumping salaries by 1/4 is not reasonable. In order for costs not to outweigh benefits that clinic would need to be some kind of utopia...
• fnordsensei 10y ago
  It doesn't seem like the best type of business to experiment on. It would make more sense in a business where hours worked more obviously is not the same as productivity. When I read about this in The Guardian way back when, they mentioned three other cases: Brath For Maria Bråth, boss of internet startup Brath, the six-hour working day the company introduced when it was formed three years ago gives it a competitive advantage because it attracts better staff and keeps them. “They are the most valuable thing we have,” she says – an offer of more pay elsewhere would not make up for the shorter hours they have at Brath. The company, which has 22 staff in offices in Stockholm and Örnsköldsvik, produces as much, if not more, than its competitors do in eight-hour days, she says. “It has a lot to do with the fact that we are very creative – we couldn’t keep it up for eight hours.” Toyota At Toyota service centres in Gothenburg, working hours have been shorter for more than a decade. Employees moved to a six-hour day 13 years ago and have never looked back. Customers were unhappy with long waiting times, while staff were stressed and making mistakes, according to Martin Banck, the managing director, whose idea it was to cut the time worked by his mechanics. From a 7am to 4pm working day the service centre switched to two six-hour shifts with full pay, one starting at 6am and the other at noon, with fewer and shorter breaks. There are 36 mechanics on the scheme. “Staff feel better, there is low turnover and it is easier to recruit new people,” Banck says. “They have a shorter travel time to work, there is more efficient use of the machines and lower capital costs – everyone is happy.” Profits have risen by 25%, he adds. Filimundus Linus Feldt, boss of Stockholm app developer Filimundus, says the six-hour working day his business began a year ago is about motivation and focus, rather than staff simply cramming in the same amount of work they used to do in eight hours. “Today I believe that time is more valuable than money,” Feldt says. “And it is a strong motivational factor to be able to go home two hours earlier. You still want to do a good job and be productive during six hours, so I think you focus more and are more efficient.” Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-turnover-down-sweden-experiments-with-six-hour-working-day https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-...
• qntty 10y ago
  I'd like to see more experiments with a 4-day/8-hour work week. https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/396527/case-32-hour-workweek/ https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/396527/case-32-hour-...
  • cylinder 10y ago
    Agree. Six hours a day seems foolish. All that time getting ready for work, commuting, etc only to spend six hours at work. I'm a much bigger believer in just being closed on Fridays if possible
    • DCoder 10y ago
      Somewhat on topic: I work 4-days/10-hours: 2 morning hours from home, commute to the office clears my head, 8 hours in the office, and Friday is free. Pros: - three-day weekends all year long - 20% less commute time - magically enforces the "Read-only Friday" rule - if I have to handle an emergency on Friday, it means overtime pay - Friday is good for running errands Cons: - clients/coworkers still work on Fridays, so I can't ignore my email entirely - occasional meetings happen on Friday This is probably not a good schedule for everyone, but I have been working it for 2 years now and I like it a lot. Although none of my coworkers are following this example...
• jahaja 10y ago
  The main reason this _very_ small scale experiment seems to be scrapped early is not because of costs, but politics. Right-wing politicians have seemingly wanted to end it as soon as possible for quite some time now - and obviously voted against the proposal from the start as well. And at this time and age, employee satisfaction and health benefits doesn't hold up against screams about costs.
  • CaptSpify 10y ago
    Source on that?
    • jahaja 10y ago
      Only in Swedish unfortunately: http://www.gp.se/nyheter/g%C3%B6teborg/sextimmarsprojektet-skrotas-i-f%C3%B6rtid-1.5343 http://www.gp.se/nyheter/g%C3%B6teborg/sextimmarsprojektet-s... It seems like the experiment was concluded as planned in the end but they still tried to end it early.
• xolb 10y ago
  If this experiment shows that the costs are too high reducing working hours, I wonder how UBI could be cost effective.
  • twblalock 10y ago
    UBI can't be cost-effective as a living wage. Living wage UBI would cost more than the entire current US government budget. Some UBI proposals aim to replace all of the current welfare systems with one UBI system that costs the same. (That wouldn't be what happens, but let's consider it for the sake of argument.) Those proposals have to limit UBI benefits to an amount that is below a living wage in order to stay within the budget of the current welfare system, assuming everyone receives the same amount of money (that's the definition of UBI, and any system that gives different amounts to different people is not universal or basic.) Plus, the government's budget would have to shrink if tax receipts drop, which they would clearly do if lots of people chose to live off UBI instead of working. So even the non-living-wage UBI proposals are probably unrealistic. UBI seems like a good idea at first, but it seems less attractive the more you look at it.
• alistairSH 10y ago
  I'm mostly amazed that their nurses are only working 8-hour shifts. In the US, it's common to work 12-hour shifts (but only 3 days/week).
  • giarc 10y ago
    This was in a nursing home, so depending on the level of care, there might only be 1 nurse on staff overnight. They could still be doing 8 hour shifts.
• trynewideas 10y ago
  In the Bloomberg story, but not in the Independent story: "Still, the added hiring by the municipality has helped the coffers of the national government by reducing unemployment costs by 4.7 million kronor during the first 18 months of the trial due to new jobs, according to the interim report."
• rocky1138 10y ago
  The article is light on details. What "costs" are they talking about?
  • tunnuz 10y ago
    They needed to employ 17 extra people on top of the 68 employees taking part in the pilot, in order to guarantee the level of service. Which to me is a win (17 people got a job) but it is clearly a cost increase that the employer was not ready to accept.
• falcolas 10y ago
  So, 1.5 million US dollars over two years (less, if you account for the saved unemployment costs. ref. trynewideas comment), for happier employees and better care. I personally have a hard time seeing this as any form of indication that it's "spiraling out of control". I agree with other commenters, this smells of politics more than economics.
  • dqv 10y ago
    Unfortunately it may not work due to the politics, but it's one of those things where govrrnment-subsidized research will help businesses down the line. The cost on paper versus real cost is not immediately obvious.
  • giarc 10y ago
    $1.5 million for 68 employees at a nursing home. I work in a healthcare system with 120,000 employees. Let's say we reduced hours to 6. Using the Swedish numbers, that would cost our organization $2.6 billion dollars, or roughly 10% of annual budget.
    • falcolas 10y ago
      The costs are not trivial, I agree. But neither are the stated benefits. I personally value those benefits, even at a 10% premium.
      • tdb7893 10y ago
        I personally would be willing to have a 10% pay cut to work only 6 hours a day
        • falcolas 10y ago
          Unfortunately, at least in the US, going down to 6 hours a day makes you a part time employee, at which point you lose a lot more than even 25% of your pay. Frequently benefits are pared down to the point of extinction, including health, vacation and holidays.
• rebootthesystem 10y ago
  > In a perfect situation this would have led to higher employment numbers and happier employees. What kind of hippie logic is this? Happier employees? I don't know ANYONE who would be happier if they got a 25% pay cut except for, maybe, single hippies who want to smoke dope all day and have no responsibilities. The average person, on the other hand, and particularly those with kids, would be devastated by a 25% cut in pay. Do you know what would happen? They would have to look for a second job. they would end-up working two shifts. Fantastic. Great for the kids, BTW. Higher employment? OK, then. Let's cut everyone to four hours a day and employ twice as many people. The truth of the matter is that you'll end-up employing exactly the same number of people. It takes N hours to get M things done. And that requires X people. You can play with how many hours an individual is devoted to a task but you still need M hours. Which means you either have X people or some number above that based on how many hours you cut. Wait a minute, that's higher employment! No, it isn't. Those who get their 25% pay cut still need to live, feed the kids, pay the bills, etc. So they go find another job or take-on a second shift. The net effect is still exactly the same: You need N hours to get M things done and that requires X people. You can "slice-up" people so it looks like each individual is working less hours on a particular task but on the aggregate the equation still holds. It's like energy. If you need 1,000 Joules you can't arbitrarily decide 750 Joules will do. No matter how you slice it, you still need 1,000 Joules. Higher employment isn't a useful metric at all, even to analyze the workforce outside of this experiment. If you have 100% employment at minimum wage you can claim "higher employment" yet the actual results would be net negative and quite destructive for the population. Employment needs to be seen in the context of reality, not in a simplistic "more is better" metric devoid of any utility.
  • scrollaway 10y ago
    I'm vouching this comment because you're bringing a valid point into the discussion but you need to tone the hostility down.
    • nitrogen 10y ago
      I'd advise caution. Last time I did the same I lost the ability to vouch. Responding to the comment itself: the idea behind reduced workweeks is that some jobs become more productive with fewer hours worked. But those are probably all white collar jobs. I'd say there's something deeply, fundamentally broken in a society if the very thought of people being able to live while working less seems so anathema.
• wlll 10y ago
  My own really short story, I (sysadmin/ops/programmer) currently work remotely about 4 hours per day, and I'm way more productive than when I worked 8.
  • guntars 10y ago
    Do you mind expanding on why that is? I hear this often and I'd like it to be true, but I find it hard to believe.
    • wlll 10y ago
      I suspect it's a number of reasons. - I work to my own schedule. There's no artificial start time. If I feel like I've got something to contribute at any point I sit down and do so. If I feel inspired or get in the zone I'll do 6 or eight hours, if I don't I'll do none, or just a couple of hours. - Conversely, if I don't feel up to it, uninspired, tired, whatever, I can stop. Taking a break/nap and coming back to something is incredibly valuable. - I'm so much less stressed than when I was working an 8 hour job. Way more relaxed, so my mental state overall is way better. - If I sit down and program/operate for 4 hours I spend the rest of the day effectively letting my brain churn on problems. I'm still thinking about the problems that I am working on, I have way more "shower moments". 6 months ago I worked an 8 hour per day job (from home still) and my own personal observation is that I'm way more effective in 4 hours now than I was in 8 at my old job. I feel productive. This might not work for other people obviously, maybe I just need/like a larger proportion of my time to be thinking time over implementation time.
      • guntars 10y ago
        I agree, working 4 hours a day will feel more effective than the last 4 hours of an 8 hour day, but the question is whether it's actually twice as effective. And perhaps it's so for very high level tasks, but I'm pretty sure for some things you just need to clock in the hours, like closing 100 tiny bugs because you're launching in a few days.
        • 10y ago
• CodeSheikh 10y ago
  I would take a 10 hours day, 4 work days and a three days long weekend over a 6 hours workday routine. Edit 1: 9-6 is 9 hours -_-
  • wott 10y ago
    > a 9-6 10 hours day Everybody would.
  • pessimizer 10y ago
    Would you take it if the 10 hour day was 8am-7pm with an unpaid hour for lunch, and the 6 hour day was 9am-4pm (with something approaching a 25% pay reduction.) 9-6 is 8 hours + lunch, aka a standard work day.
    • CodeSheikh 10y ago
      We do 9-5 or 8-4 and everyone "kind of" take lunch during those 8 hours and managers don't throw a fit about it. Unlike my last employer, where managers were sticklers about covering lunch hour or favored eat your lunch at desk kinda deal. I would be totally fine with a 8am-7pm -- disciplined 10 hours day. I don't have a family, but i can see people appreciating and spending a three day weekend with their kids. Also for young people, this can take the concept of "seekender" to more literal levels.
• christofosho 10y ago
  I'm wondering why they didn't begin with 7 hours, if it should have been expected that more money would have been spent. I feel the world is so wrapped in money that we are stuck choosing money over wellbeing...
  • clay_to_n 10y ago
    Probably so the shifts could be organized better. If the nursing home runs 24 hours, it's easier to move from 8 hour shifts to 6 than to find a way for some people to be on 7 hour shifts.
• fetbaffe 10y ago
  This pilot was actually not 6-hour workday, but 30 hour workweek. Yes, it is true that the politicians that decided it called it for 6-hour workday, but in reality is was 30 hour workweek and nothing else, because of how the facility works with scheduling and so on (regulations etc). Nurses worked between 5 to 7 hours on day shifts resulting in a 30 hour workweek. Night shifts was 6 to 8 hours. I think it is important to stress this fact that it was about workweek and not workday. Almost all media reporting on this (Swedish as well) misses this fact. You have to read the report to get that. Personally I rather work more one day and less the other. It is the flexibility over a week that is more interesting than over a day. report after 18 months 2016-10-11 https://sverigesradio.se/diverse/appdata/isidor/files/104/757fe9ed-702f-401a-b275-c3c45fcfae99.pdf https://sverigesradio.se/diverse/appdata/isidor/files/104/75...
  • marzell 10y ago
    Seeing as how even the PDF you link says in the first sentence "6-hour workday" ("6 timmars arbetsdag"), I can see why there is some confusion about the specific details.
    • fetbaffe 10y ago
      Yes, that does not really help. That shows that it is important for journalists to read the fine print. In Sweden, 6-hour workday is a well known political slogan, probably why that was used.
  • dang 10y ago
    OK, we put "30 hour work week" in the title instead. Thanks!
    • andrewstuart2 10y ago
      Wait, hold the phone. That's not really accurate according to the article nor the paper he linked. The trial was 6 hour work days, as the article claims. After downloading the aforementioned paper and uploading the to google translate, since I don't speak Swedish: > Summary 18 months with 6 hours > 6 hours of trial > City of Gothenburg decided in 2014 to conduct a trial with 6-hour day with follow-up research. The trial started 2015-02-01 and 2016-12-31 terminated after 23 months. The trial will answer the question about the effects of reduced working hours have for nurses, tenants and the economy / jobs. > The trial has been shortened working hours to 6 hours per day and 14.9 full-time employees, 17 nurses have been hired to compensate for reduced working hours. Consequential changes have made of schedule at Svartedalen center for the elderly. To provide a high comparability has no other changes made by different senior housing from others. In follow research studies 100 % Of nurses participated. ... > There are 29 sessions on a six-week period in the new schedule. Three of the six weekends included. Employees at Svartedalen work in the trial between five and seven hours on daily schedule. In practice, between 6 hours and 6.25 hours (6 hours and 15 minutes). That it not exactly six hours per day due to scheduling must answer received business needs. > Night schedule is at least six and no more than eight hours. Before the experiment was working nine hours on overnight. So yeah, the resulting full-time hours were 30, but the study was specifically interested in 6-hour work days, according to the report. The only reason it wasn't exactly 6 was for business/logistical reasons.
• fetbaffe 10y ago
  Problem for Göteborg is lack of money. Göteborgs economy is one of the worst in Sweden, about 50 billion SEK in debt. City took money from other areas to fund this pilot. This is always going to the problem in a well regulated budget like for a city. Therefore they ended it. These kind of nursing jobs in public sector is low wage and high work load, no regulation on formal training, but usually some sort of grammar school education. 97% who works with it are women. What the public employer want to do here is to use the number of work hours, instead of high salary, to attract young people. Thats the long term scheme. Wages in public sector in Sweden is falling behind private sector more and more. You can get more paid to clean someones apartment than a newly educated registered nurse with proper training from a university gets when signing up for work in the public sector. Lots of young Swedes go to Norway and work there instead and get much better pay.
• jinfiesto 10y ago
  This was a bad industry in which to pilot this. There are obviously hard time requirements in terms of when such a facility has to be staffed. Obviously, cutting everone's hours means that other people will have to be hired to pick up the slack. It's hard to believe that no one saw this coming. I'd be more interested in seeing the impact of a 6-hour working day on a business that doesn't function in this way.
• dang 10y ago
  Url changed from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/sweden-six-hour-working-day-too-expensive-scrapped-experiment-cothenburg-pilot-scheme-a7508581.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/sweden-six-h..., which points to this. Submitters: please don't submit an article that's clearly lifted from another publicly available source. Submit the latter instead. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
• ArlenBales 10y ago
  My utopian society workweek is 4 days/8 hours. That extra day off would do far more for people than one or two less hours every day. So 4x8=32 hours, vs 6x5=30 hours. I would even bargain for 4 days/9 hours, or 4x9=36 hours. That third day is huge. It's the difference from having only enough time for some leisurely weekend activities, to having enough time to take a mini-3-day-vacation every week (short flights, etc.).
  • alkonaut 10y ago
    I'd much rather do 5x6h, I suppose the difference might be if you have small children.
    • mason240 10y ago
      I agree. I preferred working 4x10 or even 4x12 before having kids (while working flexible resturant shift work). Now that I have kids and work an office job, I would much prefer a 5x6 to a 4x8.
      • imesh 10y ago
        With kids I prefer 4x8 to 5x6 but my wife wouldn't.
        • executesorder66 10y ago
          > but my wife wouldn't. Why not? You'd get to spend more contiguous time together.
          • sn0v 10y ago
            Maybe she doesn't get to work 4 days a week? I could see that cutting into their together time on weekdays.
            • executesorder66 10y ago
• douche 10y ago
  I still miss the days when I was working in a power plant and worked a 40-hour week, over four days. Especially since the schedule was arranged so that the off-days were staggered to produce a four-day weekend every other week. The only downside was, ironically, on holiday weeks, because the holiday pay was only 8 hours, which resulted in still having to work four shorter days, and often screwing up a long-weekend cycle.
• loup-vaillant 10y ago
  Something in those numbers doesn't add up. I gather they maintained the salaries. Good. They had to hire more people, at a cost of 12 million kronor. This mechanically reduced unemployment, and saved the state 4.7 million kronor. Shall I deduce the unemployed people were paid 40% less than the salary they got? Something is wrong there: in France, unemployment insurance maintains 75% of the base salary. Saving only 40% looks quite low. I need a more detailed analysis. If generalised, this would significantly reduce unemployment. We could thus lower the unemployment insurance rates. I've seen predictions this basically balances out: we can sustain the current effective salaries at no cost. The way this is presented here, this theory appears to be false. Does it? I'm sure we can draw a more definite answer, but this article is not enough.
  • Klockan 10y ago
    It could be their first job, they could have been long-term unemployed (you don't get aids forever) or they could have had jobs with lower salaries before.
    • lapinrigolo 10y ago
      So far we haven't been able to cure aids.
      • istjohn 10y ago
        Pretty sure they meant unemployment compensation or the like.
      • yazaddaruvala 10y ago
        I think the parent meant: "you don't receive aid, forever"
• saverio-murgia 10y ago
  Here on HN I always read people saying that you are more productive working 5 to 6 hours a day instead of 8. According to the people claiming that, the people who got a 25% cut in working hours should have performed better thus accomplishing the same amount of work. That obviously did not happen.
  • herrkanin 10y ago
    I think it's different with physically intensive jobs, such as nurses in the trial, and mentally intensive jobs, such as programming etc. The latter may very well end up being equally or more productive, while physically intensive jobs probably would end up with reduced productivity.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • benchaney 10y ago
    Well as another commenter pointed out, they had to hire fewer people than a naive man hours calculation would suggest, so their productivity did increase.
• basicplus2 10y ago
  Everyone in the job market needs be on such a roster or it won't work, thus it is not a failure in itself. If every business was required by law to have a tea lady (or man) per every 50 employees it would not make any business uncompetitive, and would be sustainable, and it would reduce unemployment, and I'd get a cuppa.
• baldfat 10y ago
  What a waste of a study. If they the end result is that they didn't realize the cost up front. I think this is just a poorly written click bait title. 100% they knew the cost. The outcome was : >The take away was largely positive, with nurses at the home feeling healthier, which reduced sick-leave, and patient care improving. While we are headed to super automation and the reduction of workforce (And a stagnant or growing GDP) it is either free money for the non-workers or reduced work hours. It's Jetson's again.
• Vaebn 10y ago
  To be honest I think thats not a nearly throughout economic analysis. To begin with, as noted in the article by having to pay more people, it removed some from unemployment. That as noted in the article basically halved the cost of the extra cost. But hold on. Someone removed from unemployment doesn't just sit and look pretty. Unemployment benefits are usually nothing to write home about compared to an actual wage and where previously one could just subsist they newly employed individual could now Consume much more strongly. Consume in this case means buying tomatoes, buying starbucks, buying cinemas tickets, buying dresses and whatever. All this stuff moves the economy. The question is then, has the economic impact of all this economy moving been taken into account?
• maceo 10y ago
  The headline reads: "the costs outweigh the benefits." Except there's no mention of the greatest benefit: improved quality of life for all participants.
• BurningFrog 10y ago
  Note that "Sweden" did not conduct any 6 hour day experiment. This was done in one municipal workplace with a few dozen employees. http://www.snopes.com/sweden-6-hour-workday/ http://www.snopes.com/sweden-6-hour-workday/
• kuprel 10y ago
  Maybe instead of automation taking away jobs, people will end up working less hours. This was a reduction of hours without automation, so 17 nurses had to be hired
  • anoplus 10y ago
    You absolutely nailed it.
• alexellisuk 10y ago
  This felt like click bait, it's about a Swedish nursing home - I was assuming this was related to office / tech work as it was high up on HN. It does sound ridiculous that reducing hours mean hiring 17 other staff - I've heard of tech companies being able to handle a few less hours per working week and benefiting from it.
• tu7001 10y ago
  I think it's not a good business example to test cutting hours. Taking care of somebody 6 hours instead of 8 leaves a 2 hours shortage, which therefore must be covered.