Teams become more productive when their hours are shorter

Is it true that less really is more? Can companies, by asking less of their workers, actually get more out of them? The answer, at least in some cases, is yes. A historical example comes from Britain during WWI. Workers, most of them women paid on piece rates and working long weekly hours, were engaged with the task of manufacturing artillery shells for the British military. Although investing more hours allowed these women to increase their production, that was true only up to a point. When the workweek was already quite long, assigning additional hours reduced productivity, perhaps due to workers' fatigue and exhaustion. In short, the relationship between a worker's productivity and her working hours exhibited an inverted U shape.

This intriguing phenomenon from a century ago – discovered by Pencavel (2015) – raises important questions for today. Does this pattern of work hours and productivity exist in the modern workplace? Can it be found outside of the simple, individualistic production process of military manufacturing? Is it observed in the more complex, team-oriented production settings that increasingly describe the modern workplace? If so, does the way in which working hours are allocated across a team's members matter for productivity and, if so, how? Does productivity actually increase if companies impose shorter work schedules to cut back on labour during a recession?

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https://www.rieti.go.jp/en/columns/v01_0167.html

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