The 8 hour norm
It was in the 1920’s decade that Ford realized that for optimum productivity labour well being is important. That’s the beginning of an 8 hour work day.
Between 1920’s and 2020’s a lot has changed in terms of our expectations from life our social relationships and most importantly our ability to focus on this.It doesn’t need a social scientist to tell that in an environment full of notifications/distraction and huge amount of emotional overload caused by media and news consumption the 8 hour work day itself is a mirage.
The missing link
The second point a lot of us miss on the 8 hours workday movement is that it was optimal for assembly line setup. Software or creative work or sports are not really the kind of professionals where repetitive, mentally less taxing measures of work,output or productivity can apply.Its for these reasons many good companies offer recreational facilities, mediation, greenery and stuff like that at the workplaces.
Many studies done on actual productive work done by software professionals record 3 to 4 hours of meaningful work. That too happens in bursts of 40 minutes blocks.
The rest of the time is spent on animated,less brain consuming stuff.But this is also the beauty of the human brain.While we can do brain intensive work for hours together the slacks not only recharges the brain but it also fuels some creative, lateral reflection on the task at hand.So in reality the slack is feeding into the performance we do in the 3.5 hour productive zone.
Realities of a Gen Z workplace
However a lot of the above studies have become little outdated with GenZ entering workforces.Recent article on HBR type of publications are saying that GenZ’s need for direction,purpose and connection might have shifted the niddle from 3.5-4 hours to a lesser number.In post covid world,i belive even earlier generations might have slightly lesses numbers when it comes to median productive hours.
But,most of the software industry is still stuck at 8 Hours of continuous office activity as a measure of productivity (read again).The outsourcing shops add +1 hour to this . And worst still some old executives call for 70-80-90 hours work week as a regular feature of the Indian industry. Not only is this demand out of touch with research or productivity but it is also heavily out of touch with how emotional of an average indian family men and women operate.
ps: too lazy to locate and cite the source studies.Work Hours for GenZ workplace.