Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six-hour working day

[demmiblue]

Source: The Guardian

A Swedish retirement home may seem an unlikely setting for an experiment about the future of work, but a small group of elderly-care nurses in Sweden have made radical changes to their daily lives in an effort to improve quality and efficiency.

In February the nurses switched from an eight-hour to a six-hour working day for the same wage – the first controlled trial of shorter hours since a rightward political shift in Sweden a decade ago snuffed out earlier efforts to explore alternatives to the traditional working week.

“I used to be exhausted all the time, I would come home from work and pass out on the sofa,” says Lise-Lotte Pettersson, 41, an assistant nurse at Svartedalens care home in Gothenburg. “But not now. I am much more alert: I have much more energy for my work, and also for family life.”

The Svartedalens experiment is inspiring others around Sweden: at Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska University hospital, orthopaedic surgery has moved to a six-hour day, as have doctors and nurses in two hospital departments in Umeå to the north. And the trend is not confined to the public sector: small businesses claim that a shorter day can increase productivity while reducing staff turnover.

At Svartedalens, the trial is viewed as a success, even if, with an extra 14 members of staff hired to cope with the shorter hours and new shift patterns, it is costing the council money. Ann-Charlotte Dahlbom Larsson, head of elderly care at the home, says staff wellbeing is better and the standard of care is even higher.

Carer Lise-Lotte Pettersson dances with a resident at Svartedalens care home. “I used to be exhausted all the time… But not now,” she says. Photograph: Daniel Breece for the Guardian

“Since the 1990s we have had more work and fewer people – we can’t do it any more,” she says. “There is a lot of illness and depression among staff in the care sector because of exhaustion – the lack of balance between work and life is not good for anyone.”

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-turnover-down-sweden-experiments-with-six-hour-working-day

[LiberalEsto]

1. Some people in the U.S. are working shorter days.

So their employers can avoid providing benefits.

[pampango]

2. "the experiment is likely to end next year–the centre-left coalition on Gothenburg council has lost

its majority, and the Conservatives are firmly opposed to reduced working hours.

“Under the Conservative-led coalition government in Sweden from 2005 to 2014 we spoke only about working more, and more efficiently – but now we want to discuss how to survive a long working life so we don’t destroy our bodies by the time we are 60.”

Sweden’s main trade union confederation, LO, admits it has been silent on the issue of shorter working hours, but it is trying to bring it up the political agenda. The Gothenburg experiment has high symbolic value, says Joa Bergold, a research officer at LO.

“You can see now that even liberal media are saying this is an interesting project, it could be a productive way of organising work,” Bergold says. “That is a sign the debate is changing. There is more of an acceptance from a liberal and conservative standpoint – that puts pressure on the unions to take this issue seriously.”

Thanks for finding and posting this, demmiblue.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. We need either this, or a four-day work week, as an option for full-time jobs.

[Sheldon Cooper]

4. I can promise that if you reduce my work day by 25%, yet keep me at the same wage,

I'm going to be pretty damn happy. And I'll probably do a better job, too. Who wouldn't?

[lunatica]

7. Exactly

And why is it somehow mandatory that production be so damn high anyway? If everything slows down by a day or two the world isn't going to end.

Before the advent of the fax machine things took a few days to happen. If you wanted to send a document to someone you used the mail, and they responded through the mail also. I don't remember anyone being unduly unhappy about that.

Yet we could still use the speed of the fax and scanning but simply leave what was still needed to send to the next day. What would that hurt?

[Matariki]

5. 24 hour work week. Four six hour days.

My parents generation prospered with ONE person working 40 hours. We've been sold a bill of goods.

[Rex]

6. Just the opposite of America! Efficiency down, turnover up.

Nice seeing a country that cares about the people that live there. In America we only have one of those type of people and his name is Obama. Sad we only have one person that cares.

[eridani]

8. Lavorare meno! Lavorare tutti! n/t

[ReactFlux]

9. Would probably help bring more into the workforce too

Considering all the efficiencies brought about by the tech industry should probably make it a 4 hour day... Think about what that would do to the unemployment rate, and then the economy!

The elite would absolutely hate it!

I say, FUCK THE ELITE!