工作時間越短，效率越高？

Andrew Bauer needed a way to invigorate his staff working the production line.

“I used to have them working up to nine or 10 hours a day,” said Bauer, chief executive officer of Royce Leather in Secaucus, New Jersey, in the US, which makes wallets, luggage and other leather accessories.

But the longer his employees worked, the more their productivity declined. So last year, after taking over the company from his father, Bauer cut the workday of his 15-person assembly line by two to three hours, depending on the position. Workers still received the standard breaks, including 45 minutes for lunch.

Bauer’s goal was to boost efficiency, not to cut payroll. On the contrary, he increased the team’s compensation by 15%.

Switching to a seven-hour workday paid off: output went up, with the line churning out 10% to 15% more merchandise each day. Plus, he added, his staff — many of whom have been with the company one to three decades — appreciated getting home earlier.

Shorter workdays have made headlines lately, thanks to Gothenburg, Sweden. On 1 July, the city began a year-long experiment with six-hour days, enlisting a segment of government employees to work less than their eight-hour-a-day counterparts, for the same pay.

The hope is that staffers working shorter days will accomplish just as much, only with more efficiency and less calling in sick. It’s a nice idea, but will it — and other efforts to shorten hours in the office — work?

The grand productivity experiment

Studies of past attempts by various countries to trim employees’ workdays have yielded conflicting results.

Last year, research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported in The Economist showed that the more people worked, the more their productivity tapered off.

But South Korean research detailed in the Journal of Happiness Studies last year found that employees appreciated shorter workdays in theory only. In practice, researchers found, the country’s 2004 workday reduction from 44 hours to 40 — and a declaration of Saturdays as an official day off — didn’t do much to improve workers’ job satisfaction or overall happiness. Instead, having less time to tackle the same workloadincreased their stress. The workload, it turned out, for these already-efficient employees was simply too high to get done in fewer hours.

And back in 2005, Sweden’s Kiruna district council ended a 16-year-run of mandated six-hour workdays for 250 employees, claiming the programme cost too much and was too unwieldy to manage. According to the council, managing two different sets of employee work schedules — the six-hour day and the eight-hour day — had grown too complicated. The European news site The Local also reported that at a similar experiment a hospital in Stockholm created resentment among employees whose schedules hadn’t been reduced.

Whether reduced workdays succeed may have more to do with the type of work performed, the workload and the managers overseeing it than the country or company making the change. Part of the problem is that one work schedule won’t necessarily fit all employees or job descriptions, said Cali Williams Yost, a workplace strategist based in Madison, New Jersey.

“In a competitive global economy, I find these one-size-fits-all, strict models are hard to maintain to the letter,” said Williams Yost, author ofTweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day.

When shorter workdays don’t work

Kenny Kline of MedPreps can vouch for that. In 2012, Kline trimmed the workday of 20 full-time employees he’d hired to write practice questions for medical certification exams, keeping their salaries intact. The four-month experiment was a failure.

Giving employees only six hours a day to devise test questions instead of the customary eight changed the company culture for the worse, said Kline, co-founder of the St Louis, Missouri-based company, which sells medical exam preparation materials in the US.

“People definitely worked harder and we ended up getting more out of them,” Kline said. “But they wouldn’t interact with each other at all. And they were a lot less happy at work.”

Without much time for lunch or other breaks, the camaraderie his staff once enjoyed ground to a halt. What’s more, Kline said, employees were too mentally drained at the end of the day.

“People felt a lot more burned out working six hours a day just because of the intensity,” Kline said.

Royce Leather’s Bauer can relate to the need for some people to put in more time to be more productive. At the same time that he reduced his production team’s workday, he gave his 20-person product development and design staff a pay bump and encouraged them to start working 10 hours a day instead of their customary eight. The idea was for them to create and collaborate on ideas at a more leisurely pace.

“The time increase has definitely made the office a lot more relaxed,” Bauer said. “There’s not as much stress, which definitely makes everyone a lot more productive.”

In praise of flexibility

For a shorter workday to succeed, companies have to treat the change in office hours as a guideline that can be adapted to meet various employee and business needs, not a rigid rule, Williams Yost said.

For example, she said, “What about business that has to get done in time zones during the hours the workplace is closed?” And what of companies who pile 40 hours of work on employees who only have 30 paid hours in which to get the job done?

For Jody Greenstone Miller, whose 75-person in-house staff includes people who’ve chosen to work 10, 20, 30 or 40 hours a week (for commensurate pay), knowing how long each assigned task takes is key.

“As a manager, you have to make sure people don’t work too much,” said Greenstone Miller, chief executive officer and co-founder of Business Talent Group, a consulting firm with five US offices and clients throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, North America and South America. “Because if they work too much, they end up being dissatisfied,” she said.

Debbie Carreau, chief executive officer and founder of Calgary, Alberta-based Inspired HR Ltd, agrees. To prevent “workweek creep” — and as an example to the dozens of Canadian and US companies her human resources firm serves — Carreau’s 12-person team handles the bulk of their work between 9:00 and 15:00. After that, the team goes home but stays on call, often fielding emergency messages one or two hours a night from clients dealing with on-the-job accidents, performance issues and resignations.

“People are not productive after a 37-hour week,” Carreau said. “More does not mean better.”安德魯·鮑爾(Andrew Bauer)需要一種能讓生產(chǎn)線工人精力充沛的方法。

“我過去常常讓他們一天保持工作9或10個小時。”鮑爾說道。他是美國紐澤西州斯考克斯市羅伊斯皮革公司的執(zhí)行總裁。該公司專做錢包，皮箱和其他皮革配飾。

但是他的員工工作時間越長，他們的生產(chǎn)率就越低。所以自從去年鮑爾從他的父親手上接管了公司后，他利用職權(quán)將15人生產(chǎn)線的工時縮短了兩到三個小時。工人們?nèi)匀挥袠藴市菹r間，包括吃午飯的45分鐘。

鮑爾的目的是為了提高效率，而不是減少工資。相反，他增加了小組15%的補貼。

轉(zhuǎn)變成一天七個小時的支付方式：產(chǎn)量提高了，生產(chǎn)線每天都多生產(chǎn)10%-15%的商品。此外，他補充道，許多在公司里做了十到三十年的員工都為能早點回家心存感激。

因為瑞典的哥德堡這個城市，更短的工作時長在最近成為了頭條。在7月1日，這個城市開展了長達一年的一天工作六小時的實驗。它招募了一些政府員工，讓他們在同樣薪水條件下比一天工作八小時的同行工作更少的時間。

其目的是希望工作更短時間的員工會完成一樣多的任務，擁有更高的效率，更少人打電話請病假。這是一個很好的想法。但是縮短辦公時間的努力真的有用嗎?

大型的生產(chǎn)率實驗

關于對在過去許多國家嘗試減少員工工時的研究因為矛盾的結(jié)果而無疾而終。

去年，一個來自經(jīng)濟合作與發(fā)展組織的研究出版在《經(jīng)濟學人》，其表明人們工作時間越長，他們的效率就越低。

但是，去年詳細刊登在《幸福研究雜志》的韓國研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，員工只是理論上對更短的時長表示感激。韓國在2004年的工作小時由44小時減少到40個小時，并且，宣布了星期六為官方假日，即便如此，也沒有很大地提高員工工作的滿意度或整體幸福感。相反，更少時間解決同樣的工作量會增加他們的壓力。結(jié)果證明，對于已經(jīng)高效的員工來說，工作量太大是沒法在更少的時間內(nèi)完成。

回顧2005年，瑞典基律納地區(qū)委員會對250名員工中止了每天工作六小時的規(guī)定，該規(guī)定已執(zhí)行了16年之久，其宣布該計劃耗費太大，無法靈活管理。據(jù)委員會透露，要管理兩組不同的員工工作時間太復雜了，一組是一天六個小時，另一組是八個小時。一家歐洲的新聞網(wǎng)站——瑞典地方網(wǎng)也報道過在斯德哥爾摩一家醫(yī)院類似的實驗，其引起了員工們的不滿，因為他們的時間表沒有減少。

減少工作時長是否成功也許與工作的類型，工作量以及監(jiān)督的經(jīng)理有更多關系，而不是這個國家或公司做出的改變。部分問題出在單一的工作時間表不一定適合所有的員工和工作類型。卡利•威廉•約斯特(Cali Williams Yos)這樣說道，他是新澤西州麥迪遜市的一名工廠顧問。

“在充滿競爭的全球經(jīng)濟中，我發(fā)現(xiàn)這些一刀切的精準模式很難保持到最后。”威廉•約斯特說道，他是《讓重要的事每天上演》一書的作者。

當更短工作時間無效的時候

地中海預備學校的肯尼•克蘭(Kenny Kline)可以證明這點。2012年，克蘭在保持薪水不變的情況下，減少了20名全職員工的工作時間，他評聘這些員工來記錄醫(yī)學認證考試問題。然而，為期四個月的實驗最終失敗。

只給員工一天六個小時而不是常規(guī)的八個小時來設計測試問題使得公司的文化變壞，克蘭說道，他是密蘇里州圣路易斯公司的合伙創(chuàng)辦人，在美國專門出售醫(yī)學考試的預備資料。

他說：“人們絕對會更加勤奮工作，并且獲得更多的效率，但是他們彼此之間完全不互動，他們在工作上少了很多快樂。”

如果沒有太多的午餐和休息時間，員工們曾經(jīng)享受的同事友情就會終止。此外，克蘭說，員工們在一天結(jié)束后會感到精疲力竭。

“因為工作強度，人們覺得一天六個小時的工作更容易消耗殆盡。”克蘭說。

羅伊斯皮革公司的鮑爾也會協(xié)調(diào)一些人的需要，他們需要投入更多時間來提高效率。在他減少了生產(chǎn)隊伍的工作時長的同時，他讓20人研發(fā)產(chǎn)品，計劃給員工加薪，鼓勵他們開始不再常規(guī)工作8小時，而是10個小時。目的是為了讓他們以更輕松的節(jié)奏來創(chuàng)新想法與合作。

“時間的增加絕對能使辦公室更加輕松，”鮑爾說，“沒有那么多的壓力，肯定使到每個人更加有創(chuàng)造力。”

提倡靈活

為了讓更短的工作時長獲得成功，公司必須使辦公時間的改變成為一條適應不同員工和生意需求的指導原則，而不是一條死板的法則，威廉姆斯•約斯特說道。

她說：“舉個例子，如果有些業(yè)務必須在工廠關門之前的時間段內(nèi)完成，那該如何?那么如果公司積累了40個小時的工作量給員工，而員工只能在給薪的30個小時內(nèi)完成任務，那又該如何辦?”

喬迪•格林斯通•米勒(Jody Greenstone Miller)的機構(gòu)擁有75人，其中包括選擇一周工作10，20，30或者40小時的工人(獲得相對應的報酬)，知道每項任務所花的時間是關鍵。

“作為一名經(jīng)理，你必須確保員工不會工作過度，”格林斯通•米勒說道，她是商業(yè)人才公司的執(zhí)行總裁和合伙創(chuàng)始人，該公司是一家咨詢公司，擁有五家美國辦事處，客戶遍布歐洲，亞洲，澳大利亞，北美和南美。“因為如果他們工作過度，他們最終會不滿，”她說。

黛比•卡羅同意米勒的說法，他是(加拿大)亞伯達省卡爾加里市一家激勵人力資源公司的執(zhí)行總裁和創(chuàng)辦人，為了避免工作時間效率低，作為其人力資源公司服務于十幾家加拿大和美國公司的一個范例，卡羅12人小組是在9:00到15:00之間處理主要工作。之后，小組成員可以回家，但是要隨時待命，經(jīng)常一晚要處理一或兩個小時來自客戶緊急信息，要處理發(fā)生的事情，并執(zhí)行命令。

“人們在一周工作37個小時后會不再高效，”卡羅說，“更多并不意味著更好。”