Has the 40 hr workweek outlived its time?

The dreaded 9-5 workday, the 40hr workweek, dying slowly for 8 hours a day. The spawn the industrial revolution saw the adaptation of a 40 hour work week, Monday to Friday with a two day weekend.But it was not always that way, persons could work 12-14 hour shifts 6 to 7 days a week, and by convention, the work week is supposed to be six days and one day off. You have major world religions to thank for your Saturdays off, in particular, the Jews who have strict adherence to their Saturday-Sabbath.

The world began slowly to adopt the principle of the five day work week so that markets could better interact with each other. The defined working environment was rife working conditions for the industrial age of production, innovation and discovery. But over the years the 9-5 institution had been transformed into an hours based compensation scheme, you are paid to be at work and do the tasks either assigned and created. The Proverbial dead-end job title is promulgated by clocking in, doing work all day and clocking out.

Forbes- Many companies are already adapting to find better alternatives to the standard 40-hour workweek and those that aren’t may find themselves outpaced as the 40-hour approach slowly works its way into obsolescence. The root motivation for creating and enforcing a consistent “40-hour workweek” expectation across the board is to establish a sense of fairness—both in making sure no employee receives special treatment and in making sure employees are not abused or taken advantage of by management. To date, the system hasn’t failed, but can it truly be called successful?

The death of the system is solely based on abuse of it, persons have reported working up to 60 hrs per week on average 12 hrs a day for a five-day work week, others work on Saturdays or work from home. Either way, the pretense of a standardized 40-hour workweek is an obsolete notion.

But the extra hours do not necessarily translate into higher productivity. According to a study by Stanford University, productivity declines sharply after 50 hours, and plummets to almost nothing after 55 hours, so much so that the extra 15 hours is of little value. In my opinion, I believe in a reversal for working hours on the job may be a better alternative to improving productivity. The current system causes many persons who work full-time conventional jobs, to suffer from a lack of productivity.

This lack of productivity may be attributable to a Burnout due to mental exhaustion from the monotone routine, less individual efficiency as the standard construct may affect some peoples ability work at their optimal potential.  The death of innovation as  Innovation is driven by the new—new ideas, new situations, new environments, and new perspectives. If you create a climate that never changes and is always the same, you’ll stop innovation dead in its tracks.

The regular job induces more distractions, whereas collecting everyone together for 8 hours a day, five days a week might seem like it encourages more collaboration, the reality is that it opens the door to more distractions. More unnecessary meetings pop up, more useless conversations take up time, and more people are called away from their projects to answer questions on unrelated matters.

This begs the question how much of the 40 hour work week is spent doing work? How much time during the day do you spend on work? 

What would you say if I suggested a 6 hour work day inclusive of 1 hr lunch, dinner or coffee break?

What if the work week was three days or four days, 3*12 or 4*10 

Flexitime schedule, where you set your hours 

I am not saying that the 40hr work week does not have a place, for workers who earn hourly wages putting in more hours is beneficial, but these workers are mainly in service industries as well as manufacturing. 

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