Some workers in the Swedish city of Gothenburg have a required work day of just six hours, Quartz reported.
In a week, that’d be only 30 hours in the office. Compare that to the average 47-hour work week in the U.S.
The shortened work day was announced by the Gothenburg government in April 2014 as part of an experiment to improve work-life balance and make workers more productive, according to the publication.
The experiment has taken place at a nursing home, for example. And in order to make the new method work, it needed to ramp up hiring to ensure care was met for patients.
Per the article:
At Gothenburg’s Svartedalens care home, the standard of care increased when nurses switched to a six-hour day in February, head of elderly care Ann-Charlotte Dahlbom Larsson told The Guardian.
“Since the 1990s we have had more work and fewer people—we can’t do it any more. 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,” she said.
Interestingly, while the U.S. is the second most productive country in the world (Luxembourg is the first), workers actually spend 20% more time at the office, according to OECD data.