
The 6-Hour Workday Saves Money - pencilpup223
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-17/how-the-six-hour-workday-actually-saves-money
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frahs
This chart in the article makes me suspicious:

[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i_t8UFPOJVk...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i_t8UFPOJVkA/v1/800x-1.png)

The nurses who took 6 hour workdays took roughly the same number of sick days
two years later as they did at the start. Technically they took 5% fewer days,
and perhaps that's statistically significant, but it's not (for lack of a
better word) interesting.

The control group is interesting! Why did a group of nurses taking a normal
schedule suddenly have such a huge increase in sick days? I get the feeling
that something else affected these results that we're not seeing here. I'm
skeptical that the 6-hour workday explains this. Can anyone with more
experience in the medical industry chime in to say if it's normal for the
number of sick days a nurse takes to increase that much over 2 years (for an
8-hour workday)?

People on hackernews are always skeptical and I usually hate that. I'd like to
start a trend of being appreciative. This study took two years to complete!
It's hard to foresee things happening that could make the data look strange
like this. Maybe they should have taken more information, so they could see
which trait in the control group had the highest correlation with increased
sick days. But I can't say with certainty that I would have thought to do
that. Interesting study, at the very least it's an indicator that there's
something interesting going on here worth investigating :).

~~~
sqeaky
I agree with what you say until you imply skepticism is bad, or that
skepticism is at odds with appreciation. I can appreciate and be thankful for
research even if I don't trust it or have further questions.

~~~
oconnor663
Is it really fair to interpret the parent comment to say "you cannot
appreciate or be thankful for research if you have further questions"? Or was
this just super deadpan and I got wooshed :)

~~~
sqeaky
I wasn't trying to joke, but I might have whooshed is GP was. I doubt it
though.

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methehack
A nice time to plug a lovely Bertrand Russel Essay, "In Praise of Idleness":
[http://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-
idleness/](http://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)

I think there are likely many organizational and societal benefits here not
listed in the OP article. Many of the comments here seem overly focused a
simplistic costs_savings = hours_saved - days_off equation.

Wildly speculative examples (for further research, if you will): * As quality
of care increases, healthcare costs diminish (actually mentioned in the
article) * Workers with free time are more likely to be informed citizens
resulting in better policy -- yuge, broad benefits. Spreads the happiness. *
Workers with more time are more raise children that will contribute more to
GDP (because, e.g., they have time to help with homework -- I'm not even
kidding) * Healthier workers remain in the workforce longer (adding more to
GDP before drawing retirement) * Healthier workers cost less to maintain
(because they're healthier). * Etc.

Do I know any of these are true? No. But I do know that this is a complex
system. Measuring a couple things and thinking you have an answer seems silly
to me.

~~~
kartan
I like your point. But I will like to advance it further. Even if it is
reduction in productivity -even after factoring everything-, is production
maximization our ultimate social goal?

I though that we established capitalism because allows us to find good ways of
producing what we need, so people can be healthier, more educated, happier,
and - in general - to improve the citizens well being. But the goal is not to
increase production at any cost, but to increase well being. Capitalism is a
means to a purpose, Capitalism is not the purpose itself.

So, as you say, to know the economic benefit is difficult. So if we are not
sure, applying the measure has other benefits that can make worth it.

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sotojuan
Is there any company that has a six hour day? Not a contractor or contracting
agency, but a regular white-collar business that has full-time employees.

Unfortunately, until we see a company be successful while breaking the rules
(not eight hour days, no open workspaces, etc), the world will continue the
same. Maybe when we HNers start a company or startup we should actually do
what we post about constantly.

I believe that eight hours is too much. Working eight hours a day (plus
commute, however short it may be) leaves you little time for leisure when you
add the chores of daily life. I rarely care about how the company is affected,
so I am glad studies like these exist.

~~~
wslh
My company has a six hour day since its inception in 2003. We are more than 12
people and we always thought that a eight hour day doesn't add to the
productivity. We have an employee who wants to work eight hours and he brings
some kind of development support so that works in this context.

There are days where people work longer hours because of a deadline but this
is very rare and we always optimized to taking care of our team health. Also,
our headquarters are in Buenos Aires, Argentina where a whole team working 6
hours per day is unusual.

~~~
slyzmud
Hi, I am from Buenos Aires. What's your company? I haven't heard anybody doing
something like that here, congratulations!

~~~
wslh
You can check my HN profile (I co-founded two companies).

I know other companies here that have optional flexible hours like
[http://www.7puentes.com](http://www.7puentes.com), a data science company.

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maerF0x0
It seems to me that an intelligent health insurance company may try and meter
how many hours on average that the employees work and charge a premium for
putting health risks onto the workers. eg: If on average workers are putting
50hr weeks, then the pool is riskier than they work 30hrs per week on average.

~~~
antr
Agree. Unfortunately the moment one insurance company, but not all, starts
doing this, companies will flock to those who don't "penalise" premiums for
overworking employees. This is the cynical in me speaking.

~~~
savanaly
I don't see how this follows. I thought up a simple mental model of how it
could be implemented and I don't see why companies would flock to the
insurance companies with no differentiation between hours worked.

Let's simplify and suppose currently all employees are working 40 hours per
week and the cost to provide health insurance to them is H.

If it's indeed the case that workers working 30 hours per week have better
health outcomes (and thus, lower health costs and lower costs to the person
insuring them) then the cost to insure a 30-hour-per-week employee is L, where
L < H.

So the first insurance company to capitalize on this fact would set up a two
tiered system where it provides health insurance to the 40-hours-per-week
employees at H, and health insurance to the 30-hours-per-week employees at
some P where L < P < H. They would make a short run profit if P > L. Finally,
I don't see how it would induce any "flocking" away from the insurance company
doing this by companies that continue to do the 40-hour-week thing. They keep
getting the old rate, H, especially if we're only talking about the short-run,
first mover scenario as you brought up.

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gdubs
This was my guess based on having recently read "The Rise and Fall of American
Growth" when this study first dropped. [1] The argument he makes in the book
is that a big part of the productivity jump we saw in the middle of the last
century wasn't entirely due to the stimulus of WWII as most people assume, but
was a synergy of that plus the reduction of workplace injuries, etc, related
to the 40 hour work week.

Was frustrated at the time that they seemed to be jumping to conclusions so
quickly regarding something that could be transformative to society.

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13320511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13320511)

~~~
Altay-
Having recently finished The Rise and Fall of American Growth myself, I
reached the opposite conclusion.

Yes, the decrease from 12+ -> 8 hour workdays helped health and thus
productivity and growth as the author persuasively states. But in the final
few chapters which look forward rather than back in time, it was my
interpretation that the author sees trends in declining hours & labor force
participation as headwinds to TFP growth.

It is naturally more inefficient to have more shifts and thus more people
commuting, etc. The diminishing health returns from 8 - > 6 hour work days not
being enough to make up for this loss in efficiency.

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throwaway2016a
What I don't see from this article which I would think is an important data
point: are they making the same pay as if they worked 8 hours or are they
getting paid less?

I don't see how you can say they cost less without that data point.

Additionally, the health care difference would only make them cheaper for the
employer (at least in the US) if the insurance companies gave discounts for
working 6 hour days. If the 6 hour day people and the 8 hour day people are in
the same pool it wouldn't actually save the company money (just the insurance
companies)

~~~
e12e
Just a note that for this study, the government ultimately pays the salaries
and for the sick leave - so reducing the sick leave would reduce cost.

[ed: additionally the the government also pays unemployment benefits, so if
there was a surplus of nurses, that might activate some people that were
unemployed as well]

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filleokus
I think it would make more sense to try this out on something where the output
of the labour is not directly tied to the hours put in. For example in a tax
agency, or other welfare agency that we have plenty of in Sweden. Even though
there might be interesting findings from lower sick days, happier employees
and better quality of the output (happier patients etc), I think it's far more
interesting to see this in fields where the output might stay constant even
with fewer hours worked. Essentially raising the hourly wage.

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baron816
I'm sure the nature of the industry makes the largest difference on the
effectiveness of a 6-hour workday. I willing to bet that jobs that rely
heavily on critical thinking (like software engineers) would do better to
switch.

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Apocryphon
For all of these work reduction policies (6 hour work days, ten hour work days
with three day weekends), couldn't organizations simply retain the five day
work weeks with eight-hour work days, simply by staggering shifts accordingly?
Granted, hand-off will become critical, but I don't think that's an
insurmountable issue if processes are adjusted accordingly. This is dependent
on specific industries, of course.

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conductr
I doubt the $1.3m extra per year in investment would break even. Guessing they
have ~85 employees at 6 hrs. They would have to save ~$15k per year each which
doesn't seem to be supported.

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tomcam
Good! The authors of the article should invest in a startup or buy an existing
business so they can implement these principles. They can make a fortune and
show society what's what.

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Shivetya
well with regards to added commuting as you need to have more shifts doesn't
the cost just shift?

~~~
dvtv75
This is something that's actually in the process of happening at my workplace.
The CEO is trying to reduce our shifts by half, because there isn't enough
work for us to do. (He's a poor CEO, we have a terrible reputation throughout
the city, and very few people will bother to do business with us.) The manager
is fighting it, because if they cut our shifts by half we still pay the same
for commuting, so he'll lose most of his staff in the first few days and be
stuck with a bunch of untrained new recruits.

