Guest Port by Tiffany McAdams, INVESTMENTZEN
17th May 2017
Every company spends a good deal of time searching for new, innovative ideas to keep their company on the competitive edge. Such innovation has become critical to survival in an era of cutthroat corporate politics and lightning-fast technological advancements. Staying on that cutting edge of advancement maintains a company’s viability in the global market.
Thousands of new technologies and practices appear by the day, and thousands more disappear, never to receive the credit and attention they deserve. Cost-saving technologies stand at the forefront of corporate innovation, but many more subtle ideas emerge every bit as essential to optimizing performance and profits.
In true scientific fashion, one of these more subtle ideas recently studied by the scientific community has yielded some surprising results. A long-held corporate standard, new evidence reveals that the 40-hour workweek contributes to the gradual buildup of chronic fatigue. This holds frightening implications for our accepted idea of full time work, to say nothing of our tendency to severely abuse overtime.
A rapidly growing epidemic in our culture, chronic fatigue creates both mental and physical exhaustion, and emotional deterioration. It damages morale, motivation, productivity, and overall job satisfaction. Chronic fatigue contributes to higher turnover rates, reduced efficiency and accuracy, and increased sick days among staff.
Research has shown that reducing the workweek by one full day, ideally to a 32-hour schedule, increases performance to the point that an employee can generate more work in 32 hours than they previously could in 40. Investing in a business is not an innovative concept. Investing in our employees only recently started becoming the standard. Doing so beyond the basic benefits package most certainly breaks into innovative territory.
If you could create higher rates of production, improve staff morale, reduce callouts due to illness, and dramatically reduce employee turnover with the implementation of a single, simple schedule change, good business sense would encourage at least reading the data. Take a look here, and learn why this innovative trend grows by the day.
