How Toyota Gothenburg moved to a 30-hour workweek and boosted profits and customer satisfaction - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

How Toyota Gothenburg moved to a 30-hour workweek and boosted profits and customer satisfaction - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog The video has English subtitles. If you dont see them, press the ??button in the video. Could a 30-hour workweek work? It not only could, for the mechanics at Toyota Center in Gothenburg Sweden it has worked incredibly well for over?10 years, leading to happier employees, happier customers and higher growth and profits. In this short 13-minute speech, CEO Martin Banck of Toyota Center Gothenburg explains why they made the transition from a 40-hour workweek to 30 and what the results have been. One outcome: Their mechanics now get more work done in 30 hours a week, than other mechanics do in 40. Not only is productivity higher (which you would certainly expect), their actual total output is higher! In fact, several workplaces in Sweden are now trying it out, including hospitals and nursing homes. I fully realize that many people are going to dismiss this out of hand. They are stuck in the cult?of overwork and totally committed to the idea that working more hours always means?getting more work done, even though the research shows that permanent overwork leads to poor health and low performance. It seems counter-intuitive that you could work fewer hours and get more done, but heres another example: One executive, Doug Strain, the vice chairman of ESI, a computer company in Portland Oregon, saw the link between reduced hours for some and more jobs for others. At a 1990 focus group for CEOs and managers, he volunteered the following story: When demand for a product is down, normally a company fires some people and makes the rest work twice as hard. So we put it to a vote of everyone in the plant. We asked them what they wanted to do: layoffs for some workers or thirty-two-hour workweeks for everyone. They thought about it and decided they?d rather hold the team together. So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody?s hours and salary down ? executives too. But Strain discovered two surprises. First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it?s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back! Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it?s endured at the insistence of our employees. We need to fundamentally?change how we think about?time in the workplace and?Toyota?Gothenburg is a great example to learn from. Related posts New research: Overwork kills people and hurts performance How to stay happy at work when things get busy Free time the forgotten dream Memo from one boss: Dont work too much 5 new rules of productivity Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related