The 40-hour workweek is the hallmark of full-time employment in many countries. Five days per week, eight hours per day with weekends off. This experience has been so well-engrained in our society that many of us never question it. After all, we want to be hard workers. We want a ‘real job’. If we don’t work an eight hour day, some of us think we didn’t work hard enough. The answer? It depends. What are we doing during that time? How much effort are we putting in? How efficient are we working? All of these questions lead us to an even bigger question – do we really need to work 8 hours a day? Today, we’re exploring the truth about full-time employment.
Why Is 40 Hours Per Week Considered Full Time?
The 40-hour work week was supposed to be a good thing! When it was first established in the early 1800s, the eight hour work day was a reprieve.
Check out Wikipedia’s page related to the eight-hour day. In the years prior to Britain’s Industrial Revolution, workers were regularly exploited by business owners – it wasn’t uncommon to work as many as 16 hours per day and six days per week, even for children!
One can imagine that worker exploitation has occurred in many forms across all of time – ‘work’ was life more the vast majority of time in one form or another.
“Eight hours’ labour, Eight hours’ recreation, Eight hours’ rest”
-Robert Owen
This was the original goal of Robert Owen whilst promoting socialism and worker’s rights during this time period. Politics aside – this is factually the first person that discussed the idea of an 8-hour work day.
Throughout the remainder of the 1800s and into the 20th century, the work day gradually shrunk. This happened in Europe, South America, the Middle East and East Asian countries alike.
By the mid 20th century, the majority of civilized countries had adopted the eight hour work day as ‘law’.
Labor unions for public servants, construction workers and other occupations strictly uphold the 40 hours per week schedule – hours worked beyond this are paid at an overtime rate.
Then there’s the ‘full time salary’. Many of us understand that ‘salary’ often means 40+ hours per week, but some work 50, 60 or even more hours. Why?
Related Articles:
- How Can I Get Back My Focus At Work? 4 Common Situations
- What Are The Disadvantages Of Remote Working? 5 Realities To Consider
- How To Be More Efficient At Work: 8 Easy Practices
- I Don’t Like My Job: What Should I Do? A Few Things To Keep In Mind
The Real Deal On A ‘Salary’
For many years, a fixed paycheck was not guaranteed.
Think about it – farmers would only make what they could grow and sell. Workers in factories, production or construction will only work when there’s work to be had. No work, no money. Guaranteed pay for consistent work has been an anomaly for the bulk of human existence.
As industry, business and quality of life have expanded and become more complex, jobs have become more plentiful. Business has grown to such a degree that entire staffs of people work all year round to keep them running year after year. Some businesses have support staff working ’round the clock all the time.
Once jobs were consistently required (to keep up with consistent business) and no longer depended on varying factors like the weather, it made more and more sense for employers to keep employees on board all year long. The salary is born!
This is supposed to be a good deal for employers and employees alike. Employees get a consistent paycheck and a steady job, while employers can rely on a steady staff.
Why Do Salaried Employees Not Get Overtime?
You’ve probably noticed that many salaried employees consistently work more than 40 hours per week without receiving any overtime. Why is that?
Federal and State governments do in fact require that workers get paid a minimum wage as well as overtime for hours worked beyond 40 each week. With this, of course, are exemptions…
Here’s a link to Fact Sheet #17A of the U.S. Dept. Of Labor ‘Wage & Hour Division’ titled ‘Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer & Outside Sales Employees…’.
Feel free to check out this link, but in short – there’s a pretty good chance your job is considered ‘exempt’. This rule of the U.S. Dept. Of Labor is why the majority of salaried employees do not get overtime.
While any reasonably good employer will not demand that employees work a huge amount of overtime, the tropes of ‘putting in the work’ and ‘proving ourselves’ in order to reach a deadline, avoid layoffs, get a promotion or keep the company afloat is a carrot that’s dangled in front of salaried employees all around the world.
This is a form of indirect bribery in many ways – do more work, potentially get a reward. These rewards are great and often worth the effort…when they’re given. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Sometimes we end up working extra hard for months or years without much to show for it.
Ironically, these circumstances bring us back to square one – employers taking advantage of employees by demanding they work more hours. It’s a vicious cycle.
Working Hard Or Hardly Working? The Ways We Spend Our Time…
Now that we’ve thoroughly identified where the 8 hour work day comes from, let’s talk about how effective it actually is in relation to getting work done.
Let’s get one thing straight: hours worked does not equal work completed!
Some of us work a real 50-60 hour week. Every hour is honest. This is quite commendable, but really doesn’t make much sense unless the pay and benefits are equal to this amount of effort.
How about useless staff meetings? They can take up several hours of time per week. Is that really ‘work’? No. Most of the time, we’re spacing out.
Do you find yourself etching the clock? Making tasks take longer than they should to fill up time?
How about redundant administrative processes? Inefficient work methods? Uncoordinated departments? Working on slow, outdated equipment? We all experience these things each week at our full time jobs.
Let’s not even get started on social media and other non-work at work.
In this day and age, very few people do actual work throughout each hour of their entire 40-hour work week. A lot of it isn’t even the fault of employees. Yet, many employees feel stress this entire time when pressured to hit goals, perform adequately, etc.
Combine this stress with other logistical practices like long commutes and prepping for work throughout the week make our full time job feel even fuller – tiring us out despite not actually being ‘work’.
Related Articles:
- How To Not Be Annoying At Work: A Few Things To Keep In Mind
- How Do You Run An Effective Status Meeting? 10 Best Practices
- Managing Projects With A Short Attention Span: 6 Must-Do Habits
- How To Have A Life Outside Of Work: Give These 10 Tips A Try
Do We Really Need To Work 8 Hours A Day? The Truth…
When it all comes down to it, no two workplaces are the same. Many jobs are quite different from one another too. There’s no cut-and-dry answer for every single situation. That said…
Do we really need to work 8 hours a day? When you consider the points discussed in the prior section like inefficiencies and other time-wasters – no, we do not need to work 8 hours a day.
The amount of work a person does in a day should directly reflect the amount of work required to reach a particular goal or result as efficiently as possible. Within this process, the person doing the work should be paid fairly and live an overall healthy life.
Said another way, it’s not the hours that are important, it’s the effort, efficiency and achievement.
I hope this article has been helpful – thanks a lot for reading!
