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I’m sure there was arguments against a 5 days work weeks in the past over 6 or even 7 days.
We have one life, and to spend the majority of it working just to live isn’t good.
Also, most of it is usually due to wages theft, making people work peanuts while earning several if not ten or millions a years is not sustainable.
edscoble
Its not necesarily a question of cutting hours and making people work harder in the hours that they do work...when done properly its recognising that if you pay people more to do less work, they will do better work and you will have less of an issue retaining staff. This is especially true if they get more time to spend with friends and family and doing the things that make them happy.
I'd rather employ 100 people working ~34 hour weeks on the same amount of pay as if they were working 40 than 70 people working 48 hour weeks but being paid for 40 trying to keep their heads above water.
In my experience (which is very focussed on fintech) if you've got a staff churn anywhere above 10% per year, it starts to make good financial sense. Its not just the cost of recruitment, its the time lost recruting when you should be earning money.
If you think about the relationship between a company and an employee more, its farcical what people are willing to sacrifice to pay their rent and bills. Start working at 18 and retire at 70 working an average of 220 days per year? Thats about 8.5 full time calendar years of your life doing something that isn't your first choice in what you want to be doing.
How much is 8.5 years of your life worth? How much money is over 10%* of your life worth?
*The figure is even worse when you calculate as a % of your life when you're not sleeping.