Over the years, working hours have slowly settled down to the accepted timescales of an 8-10 hour day, stretching between 8 and 6, or somewhere in between. 5 days a week, most of the UK’s working population will show up to work to fulfil the same hours over the same days at the same time.
Not many companies have tried to rock the boat too much when it comes to working hours, but if they did, would they be a more productive company for it? We think there’s potential.
A solid work-life balance is heavily advised in order to ensure an employee is achieving what they are expected in work, whilst still leaving time to have a life outside of work; socialising, exercising, seeing family, winding down etc. A good work-life balance can help to deter fatigue, stress and overexertion – all of these inevitably lead to a drop in performance at work.
The work-life balance is often mentioned in context to ensuring a better quality of life for workers, whereas it can also apply to better results from a business, if assessed and altered appropriately. We’ve picked up on 3 alternatives to the fixed 8 hour, set timescale, workday and commented on how they can be more productive for a business:
Flexitime
Flexitime is used by a lot of companies, and essentially entitled employees to a variable work schedule, around a certain set of core hours and provided they meet a certain number of hours per week. For example, an employer could request that you are always in work between 10 AM and 3PM, but you can choose to start as early or finish as late as you like around those set times, provided you complete a certain number of hours in a week (40, for example).
This is beneficial to employees who like to have a bit more freedom and autonomy, and can also help out workers with a lot of out-of-work commitments, such as dropping children off at school, extracurricular activities or just a busy schedule.
Shorter Days
Experimenting with shorter days may prove to be fruitful for your business. Working longer hours often pushes employees to procrastinate more. Being faced with an 8 or 9 hour day, it can be all too easy to plan ahead and spread your work load out over these hours – with shorter days, employees often get the same amount of work done, but in a shorter space of time. A lot of studies state that the ideal amount of hours to work a week is 40, which most companies do.
The question is; is it possible to bring this number down, whilst achieving the same results?
Target Based Hours
Generally, people have a set amount of work to do in a week, and they will spread this work out over the course of their work week. This is smart, organised and recommended. However, in a hypothetical target based schedule, employees could clock off once they had done their designated work for the week, therefore making them more productive and time-efficient.
What would this mean for businesses?
The aim of a workplace is to get work done, first and foremost, but under that umbrella comes keeping staff happy, and being a financially and environmentally responsible company. Whether it’s Flexi time, shorter days or target based hours, mixing up the timescales of the standard working week could have a positive effect on your staff, and even your finances; spurring creativity, a more positive workforce or even achieving more work in less time.
The 8 hour day, 5 days a week works well for a lot of businesses, but we’d love to see businesses, especially small businesses, get a little more creative with exploring their working hours and staff
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