If you have a company with five employees, one of them will probably work eight hours a day. If this were true, you would have to reduce half the workers’ salaries. And if five people are working eight hours a day, you’d be doing five people’s work, too. How does this balance the work load? We’ll discuss the benefits and drawbacks of having five people work eight hours a day in the following paragraphs.
One of the strongest arguments against the eight-hour working day is its potential to reduce productivity. A five-person team, each working eight hours a day, can complete the task of assembling four hundred toys in five days. In contrast, if four people work eight hours a day, they can complete the task in six days. And, if the work is done by five people each working eight hours a day, each of them can earn up to $65 a day.
But while shorter work days are generally more convenient for employees, they can be problematic for society. Research suggests that a person’s creativity declines after five hours of concentrated focus. But not all jobs require such intense concentration – factories, call centres, and care homes don’t even require that. And, of course, five hours of uninterrupted concentration is not the ideal working day for everyone. However, these disadvantages are outweighed by the benefits of an 8-hour workday.
One of the best arguments for this solution is the fact that five people each working eight hours a day can assemble 400 toys in five days. The average number of toys assembled per person per hour is two, so five people could assemble 400 toys in five days, or about 1.2 per hour. This option is the most popular and most likely to be the most cost-effective solution. It is worth a try.
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