Iceland’s magic: How shorter work hours made employees more productive

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an important discussion about balancing workloads and adopting a shorter week system to give employees enough time for health and personal needs. However, researchers in Iceland have started to think in this direction way before the pandemic was in question. 

Iceland experts conducted two trials to analyse the effect of a shorter work week on employees. The trial involved about 2,500 workers, which accounts for more than 1% of the country’s working population.

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And to much surprise, the experiment was a huge success as employees were able to get paid by doing less work and without any compromise on the quality and productivity of the work. Researchers found that shorter weeks also improved the overall personal well-being of the workers.

This Iceland research is one of the few large, formal studies on the subject. The study also highlighted some of the initial problems faced by the workers during the analysis. To address the issue,  organisations took effective steps like introducing formal training programs on time management to teach the employees to reduce their hours while maintaining productivity, said a report by Bloomberg.

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The researchers also noted that the trials worked because both employees and employers were flexible, willing to experiment and make changes when something didn’t work.

In some cases, employers had to add a few hours back after cutting them too much. Iceland did the trials partly because people were reporting relatively long working hours, averaging 44.4 hours per week – the third-highest of Eurostat countries in 2018, Bloomberg reported

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So, the study was conducted in multiple sites running different simultaneous models. At some sites, four of the five workdays were shortened by an hour. At others, staff worked regular hours Monday to Thursday, and a half-day on Friday. Salaries for both models remained unchanged.

And at the end of the trial, staff voted for their preferred model as a permanent arrangement. The result was clear – more than 90% of workers wanted to shorten their workday by one hour four days a week.

The employees noticed that the new model not only helped them become more focused on their job but also gave them enough time to spend with family, which was next to impossible earlier.