AREXIM Packaging shifts to 6H work days
“It’s just not true that if you stay at office longer you get more work done”, once says Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp. And this is hell of a true thing.
This post is not about pro-employee propaganda, neither is it a utopian reflection on what perfect employer-employee relations should be like. We’ve covered a long road to the decision of shifting to 6-hour workday here, in AREXIM Packaging. This article describes what arguments encouraged us to do so.
We might now unwind a 500-lines longread on the importance of motivation, work-life balance, employee morale etc., but we won’t (there are already numerous contributions on this topic elsewhere). All these things matter, and matter critically for the outcome of a single manager’s and the whole company’s efficiency. Everyone knows it, everyone admits it, multiple studies prove it. Six-hour work day instead of the orthodox 8 hours seems to us a straight path to achieve it.
However 999 out of 1000 employers would still say “well, happier employees create healthier workplace atmosphere and so on, but reducing the work week to 30 hours is just not for our company. We’re doing business, not running social projects – it’s all about numbers, profits, this is what employees receive their salaries, not for being happy .” The answer is – Exactly! What you pay your managers for is the profit and the value they bring to the company.
Just like business creates extra value to persuade customers to stay with the brand and buy more of the brand’s products or services, companies should work out methods that make employees’ lives better and get higher rates of productivity, engagement and creativity, and less procrastination, error and burnout in return. Shifting to 6 hours workdays is one good example. This is no charity, no “hey-come-work-for-us-we-have-shorter-work-day-don’t-ask-about-salary” – nothing like that, just a pure bargain as it’s meant to be. This solution is hard to apply (physically and financially) when it comes to production works and in most cases client service, but in case of marketing, purchasing departments or alike, that’s the best you can do – for people and for the business.