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The culture of work in America is sufficiently ingrained in most of us; it is the work ethic we have all been taught. Working hard and being productive are excellent traits. They are things to be proud of, and a major factor in the unrivaled innovation of the United States. It is also been how we earn a decent wage, provide for our families, and if we are lucky enough – enjoy the luxury of leisure. These have been the goals we strive for. They are good goals.

Throughout much of history, it was widely believed that as our productivity increased, the number of hours we worked would naturally decrease. And due in large part to technological advancements, worker productivity HAS increased dramatically. According to an article entitled “Productivity and the Workweek” by Erin Rauch, an average worker today needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much as one working 40 hours per week in 1950. In 1956, then-vice president Richard Nixon said that a four-day workweek was “not too far distant.” And yet the promised reduction in work time has not happened. Many of us are working more than ever. In fact, American employees put in more hours and take fewer vacations than just about anyone else in the industrialized world (exceptions would be Korea, Japan, and a couple others).

Let’s take a look at some of the information on this subject to illuminate why this is and why we may need to reconsider our approach to work and success.

Sense of Expectation

From an article by David Russell and John Fontana in ITWorld:

…we are all held captive by what we believe corporations expect of us. If we don’t log 50-hour workweeks, we risk showing that we aren’t really interested in the company or its success. Working anything less than 40 hours per week is something we should feel guilty about.

Myth of Productivity

Accepted thinking tell us that if we want to be productive we just need to work more. It is the productivity = work hours approach and we have taken it to the extreme. Unfortunately, this simple thinking is a myth – the truth about productivity is much more complex.

From Evan Robinson’s “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work: 6 Lessons” -

Productivity varies over the course of the workday, with the greatest productivity occurring in the first four to six hours. After enough hours, productivity approaches zero; eventually it becomes negative.

Consequences of Overwork

The Families and Work Institute completed a National Study in 1997 that identified how work, family and personal life fit together.

Of particular concern are the negative spillover effects that demanding and hectic jobs can have on the quality of workers’ personal lives and well-being. When job demands exceed some individually defined level, it seems that not even the most supportive workplaces can fully protect workers from negative job spillover into their personal lives. This spillover is reflected in high stress, poor coping, bad moods, and insufficient time and energy for people who are personally important, creating “problems” that, in turn, spill over into work and impair job performance.

Efficiency-Week Theory

Efficiency Wage Theory is one of the original theories in the area of productivity causation. Wikipedia notes that:

In labor economics, the efficiency wage hypothesis argues that wages, at least in some markets, are determined by more than simply supply and demand. Specifically, it points to the incentive for managers to pay their employees more than the market-clearing wage in order to increase their productivity or efficiency. This increased labor productivity pays for the relatively higher wages.

The idea is that a) higher wages increase the opportunity cost of getting fired and therefore incentivise hard work, b) higher wages minimize employee turnover, c) higher wages improve morale which leads to increased productivity, d) higher wages allow employers to attract better workers, and e) higher wages enable workers to take care of themselves and maintain the condition required for harder, more productive work.

The efficiency-week theory expands upon the efficiency wage hypothesis to include reduction of work time as a significant determining factor in labor productivity.

From Robert LaJeunesse's 1999 article in Challenge magazine "Toward an efficiency week - correlation between shorter workweek and higher productivity":

The virtues of shorter work times are not unlike those of higher wages, but they are more numerous. The macroeconomic benefits include the fact that workers will have more time to consume a greater volume of goods and to develop sophisticated tastes for more expensive goods. As Ford predicted in 1926, "the short week is bound to come because without it the country will not be able to absorb its production and stay prosperous" (Crowther, 1926). The efficiency-week hypothesis is more than a short-term boost for aggregate demand. The increased social productivity that results from reduced work times can create long-term improvements in the standard of living. In the short term, workers become more productive, and in the long run, future generations benefit from the human-capital investments made by their nonharried parents.

Evidence

• US Worker productivity unexpectedly accelerated, rising 2.2% in the first quarter of this year, despite (or perhaps because) a decrease in hours worked of 1.8%.
• France and Britain both have lower hours worked than US, yet they have higher productivity per hour worked than their counterparts.
• Mary Dean Lee at McGill University and Shelley MacDermid at Purdue University in Indiana did a study on the effect of reduced workload. This study gathered information from 81 of 87 individuals who were originally interviewed from 1996 to 1998 about their experiences with voluntary reduced-load work in 43 American and Canadian companies. Individual performance of employees working reduced work load had been maintained or actually improved in a significant majority of the cases reviewed.

Conclusion

Ok, so just because productivity per hour appears to increase with a reduction of hours, there is a limit to where that can go. And it doesn't mean we can just barely work; productivity is ultimately the combination of productivity per hour (efficiency) and the number of hours worked as well as how those two factors relate. But all the data available should make us re-evaluate our beliefs in this area, and for some of us, take a renewed approach. There is an equilibrium that allows us to achieve the maximum productivity with the minimum number of hours worked.

Besides, productivity aside, work/life balance is a necessity for happiness. What value is the money we earn if we don't have time to enjoy what it can do for us? What value are our families if we don't have time to spend with them? And if we can achieve similar or greater productivity; if we can deliver success for ourselves and our employers when applicable, all with less time, what are we doing? Think about it...