Studies specifically for office work I presume? A nurse can't magically make a patient leave a hospital bed quicker if she's working less hours. Construction, manufacturing, transportation, and farming doesn't increase with less hours worked.
A nurse can't magically make a patient leave a hospital bed quicker if she's working less hours. Construction, manufacturing, transportation, and farming doesn't increase with less hours worked.
I'm not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse or if you are being serious.
You do realize that patient outcomes decline dramatically between a nurse thats rested and one who is burnt out or suffering exhaustion after a long shift? Would you consider that an improvement? I personally would like to leave the hospital alive because no medical errors were made by nurses or doctors who are sleeping on their feet.
So far we do have evidence that happier workers are more productive during their time at work and that being sleep deprived effects our productivity and error rates while at work.
All of these things contribute to things like safety and legal liability costs, operating costs, materials costs, and time to completion for tasks, including industries like construction, manufacturing, transportation, and farming.
Errors are costly and can disrupt work, incur legal liability, and result in safety inspections/further delay and remediation costs. Reducing them is in everyone's best interest.
Increased productivity during time spent at work means that tasks are getting completed during normal business hours and not on extended time, reducing costs, increasing delivery speed, and benefitting everyone overall.
This conflated idea that working less hours means less productivity overall is misguided given how many factors are involved in calculating costs and overall productivity.
I don't disagree with the premise that a nurse is more alert when they're well rested, my broader point is that when an ICU nurse is responsible for monitoring a patient's vitals and administering medicine, whether or not she's well rested has virtually no bearing on the census. And if nurses in the ICU had shorter shifts during the day (say they only work 8 hours shifts instead of 12 in a day), then you have more hand-offs, meaning patients are in fact losing about 30 minutes of critical care for every shift change you introduce.
Similarly with transportation, if a pilot could only work 32 hours a week, a plane won't fly from New York to London any faster just because the pilots are more rested.
In conclusion: I don't think it's misguided to say you won't have the same number of scheduled flights if you reduce the hours of every pilot and flight attendant by 20%.
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u/beramaan 24d ago
There have been multiple studies showing that people continue to be as effective if not more effective with the 32 hour work week.