The owners of an Oregon tech company instituted a 32-hour work week for their employees, moving away from the traditional 40 hours, and found productivity actually improved.
Ryan Carson, CEO of Treehouse, a company that offers tech training for
adults, told The Atlantic that benefits and wages remained the same even as work hours were decreased. Productivity never suffered though, he said, and may have actually increased.
"We've proven that you can take it from an experiment into something that's doable for real companies and real people in highly competitive markets," he said.
Treehouse CFO Michael Watson told The Atlantic that he was initially skeptical and even thought Carson was "crazy."
But the intangible benefits of the shorter work week have been clear, he added.
"I think that when people aren't overworked, the chance for that light bulb or epiphany moment, or whatever you want to call it, is increased."
Carson told The Atlantic the idea of decreasing the numbers of hours Treehouse employees were required to work came to him when he was sitting on the couch with his wife.
"I think it really came home when I had kids," he said. "With kids, you realize that you have this kind of 18-year window, and then it’s done. No matter how much money I make or how powerful I get, I can’t buy time."
When his wife turned to him and said, "What is this? I thought we could control our life now that we own our own company. But we seem to be, you know, working a lot more," Carson began to think about changes, he told the magazine.
"There’s no rule that you have to work 40 hours, you have to work more, to be successful," he said.
Fast Company reported in 2014 that several countries have longer work weeks than the United States, including Korea, where employees work an average of almost 2,700 hours per year. But in Sweden and Denmark, the numbers are significantly lower at 1,550 and 1,500, respectively.