Sweden has a lot to offer — universal wellness care , beautiful countryside , and a healthy thriftiness , to name a few of its perk . A newfangled reason to envy the state ? recently , some of its employer have implemented a 6 - hr workday , using the foreshorten afternoon as a fashion to essay whether employee esprit de corps — and productiveness — will amend .
The 8 - minute workday was create during the 19thcentury , thanks to matrimony . But CEO and public sphere officials alike have reevaluated it in recent years , remark that the typical 9 - to-5 has become bloated with emails , confluence , and societal medium . As employees spend more meter at the office , they ’re fall behind out on bonding with family members , getting less eternal sleep , and generally burn out . They argue that by working smarter — not long — it ’s potential to achieve a symmetricalness .
Stockholm - based app developer Filimundus is one ship’s company that has take the bound , along with tech startup Brath . Toyota Services in Gothenburg reportedly trim back back to a 30 - hour week years ago . And in February , a government - execute Swedish retreat companybegan experimenting with 6 - hour days , saying the increase price balanced out because the nurses were less fagged — and comfortably at their Job .

Do n’t start planning a move to Sweden just yet , though . AsFast Companypoints out , in the 1990s , other Swedish retreat home and day care adjudicate 6 - minute days and found them too expensive . ( The jury ’s still out on the current nursing house experimentation ; official results wo n’t be available until 2016 . ) Andas CNN report , most ship’s company in Sweden still bond to 40 - time of day body of work weeks .
According to a 2014 Gallop poll , the average American employeeworks an average of47 60 minutes a week . Even if our hirer do n’t come after Sweden ’s lead , we can still endeavor to scale back our hour — or at least realize that life history should n’t begin and end in the office .
[ h / tFast Company ]