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Are we working too much? What happened to the 40 hour work week? Do you dream for TGIT — Thank God it is Thursday?

The sad reality is that most of us work more than 40 hours a week.  85.8 percent of men and 66.5 percent of women in American routinely work more than 40 hours a week. Most of us also feel that our companies (or our own business) is not able to offer the kind of benefits and perks employees crave.

While employees are working longer, they’re not necessarily working smarter. A recent Gallup poll found 70 percent of the American workforce is disengaged on the job, leading to more than $550 billion in lost productivity annually. Workers are looking for better flexible time options, which is why two in five working adults would be willing to give up some portion of their salary for more flexibility.

via Thursday is the New Friday: Embracing the 4-Day Work Week | LinkedIn.

So, is it time to consider, I mean seriously consider, a 4 day work week? The are companies experimenting with 4 – 10 hour days.  If the data is right, you would still get more than 40 hours so why not allow employees some more flexibility? 

“…There’s one surprising effect of the changed schedule: better work gets done in four days than in five. When there’s less time to work, you waste less time. When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important. Constraining time encourages quality time.” ~~Jason Fried, CEO of 37signals, now Basecamp

Now, what would be interesting would be to see some employee engagement data. It wouldn’t be difficult to measure how engaged employees were before and after a change like this. Productivity data would also be valuable. Does it really go up?

These are interesting suggested changes. Let’s see the data.

If it does improve, or least doesn’t damage, employee engagement, then it might improve customer engagement. That could be measured as well.

What do you think of this trend?