Ever wonder why we work eight hours a day, five days a week? Or why we clock in from 9 to 5? It started with the shift from agriculture to manufacturing during the industrial revolution. Originally, factory workers clocked in long hours six days a week.一种70-hour workweek wasn’t uncommon.
在1920年代，亨利·福特（Henry Ford）实施了为期八个小时的工作日，并进行了三个班次，以全天候运营自己的工厂。然后，在大萧条期间，政府使用了40小时的工作周作为解决失业的工具。它停滞不前，已经成为标准实践已有80多年了。但是，这在当今的工作场所中是相关的。
“The 40-hour workweek was based on one person—male—performing labor for pay that he brings home to his family,” says Stephanie Bolster McCannon, organizational psychologist and wellness coach. “That is an archaic system. Most of today’s households have dual income earners. You have both people out of the home for eight hours or more. Then they come home and work again, taking care of the house and family. It’s no longer an eight-hour workday, especially for females in our society, who are often take on a larger portion of the household and family responsibilities.”
随着大流行期间的工作安排的转变，企业正在仔细研究其规则和实践，而《工作周》就是其中之一。政府也在寻找。一种加利福尼亚州议会的新法案对于拥有500名员工或更多员工的公司，这将使正式的工作周官方工作32小时。
减少工作时间的两个主要原因
During the pandemic, burnout became a major problem, as work and life started to blur together for remote workers. Instead of having boundaries around where work stops and home life begins, people are tackling email and projects at all hours of the day and night.
“We have extended past what science says was good for the human body at 40 hours for physical work,” says Bolster McCannon. “Mental work is another whole ballgame. Thinking is very taxing and requires a lot of energy. Neuroscience tells us that whenever the synapses are firing and we’re thinking hard, we use a lot of glucose.”
公司正在重新考虑40小时工作周的另一个原因is for recruiting. “The war for talent is so competitive,” says Brian Kropp, chief of research for Gartner’s HR division. “Companies are tired of paying people 20% more money to come to their company only to go someplace else six months later for 20% more. They’re rethinking the 40-hour workweek and saying, ‘We’re not going to pay you more, but you’re going to work less.’ It’s a way to attract and retain talent.”
What a shorter week looks like
克罗普（Kropp）表示，在设计较短的工作周时，公司有选择。例如，这可能是为期四天的工作周，也可能是每个其他星期五休息。但是，他们的问题是：如果人们工作时间少20％，这是否意味着他们的生产力降低了20％？
Kropp说答案尚不清楚。他说：“一些研究表明，当人们工作减少时，他们的产量确实会减少，但降低了3％或4％。”“时间的减少不等于随着组织正在尝试这些不同的方法的实验，产出的减少。而且一些相同的研究还表明，它们也不太可能退出。”
Should you go all in?
克罗普（Kropp）说，一个很大的问题是将其推出，然后发现生产力就无法维持它。
“完成后如何撤消它？”问克罗普。“If you’ve said you’re going to go to a 32-hour workweek and keep the same pay, and then come back and say, ‘Well, that didn’t work, and you’re going back to working 40 hours,’ the reaction from employees will be to say, ‘That’s fine. But then you need to increase my salary by 25%, because I’m going from 32 hours to 40 hours.'”
在全力以赴之前，Kropp建议运行一名飞行员，以了解对组织的绩效和生产力的影响。这是弄清楚它是否可以在您的公司工作的关键步骤。现在是实验的最佳时机。
“Summer is right around the corner,” he says. “Give every third Friday off across the summer or some version of that. If it’s limited to the summer, it gives you the ability to end it at the end of the summer if it’s not working. If it’s working really well, then just keep doing it.”
一种nother way to structure the workweek
Bolster McCannon说，与其按小时来衡量工作，而是通过产出进行测量。她说：“当您最有生产力地完成某些任务时，我们都有独特的能源周期。”“科学告诉我们，我们不能只是继续推动和磨碎。这就是您破坏人力资本的方式。但是，如果我们将其切换并按产出付款，它允许人们最大化这些能量周期而不会烧毁。”
Kropp says basing work on output is conceptually a good idea, but the workplace isn’t quite ready for it yet. “In a remote hybrid world, managers have less visibility into what employees are actually doing and the contributions that employees are making,” he says. “In an in-person world, managers can see what’s going on. One of the big challenges about letting people work as much or as little as they need to get things done and holding them accountable to their outputs is that it’s harder to see the outputs.”
We’re a couple of years away from having technology that can figure out the measures of performance productivity and output, says Kropp. “Right now, most organizations don’t have the managerial capabilities to measure it and do it well,” he says. “That’s the hard part about shifting into an output space world.”
一种s more companies test new working hours, Kropp advises that everyone stay patient. “This is going to be a new world, and it’s going to take three to five years to figure out what companies need to do it right. It’s going to take a willingness to experiment, but also the courage and competence to say something’s not working.”
Bolster McCannon说，进入劳动力的一代可能是坚持下去的驱动力。她说：“他们说的是，‘这40小时的工作周对我来说并不适合。'“每个人都在谈论自我保健。这是从我们的组织和我们的国家开始的地方。由于工作场所压力，与压力有关的健康问题浪费了多少钱？没有足够的停机时间。如果其他国家可以做到，我们当然可以。”