What is the ideal length of work day?
In the end, scientists generally agree that the ideal daily working time is around 6 hours, and more concentrated in the morning.
An 8-hour shift is a global norm that full-time employees are required to work daily, 5 days per week, for the total hours worked per week to equal 40, according to the same norm.
The eight-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual labor that workers were forced to endure on the factory floor.
Decreased quality of life is one of the big issues facing people who work a four-day, 10-hour work, according to Forbes magazine. Even if you get home in a good mood, you'll have less time to spend with family, especially with young children who might need to get to bed by 8:00 or 9:00.
With 12-hour shifts, your physical and mental health may be at risk. Those who work long shifts are more prone to obesity, sleep problems and low energy levels. Certain professions require long shifts due to the on-the-job duties. Examples are truck drivers, nurses and police officers.
A 9-to-5 workday assumes that employees log a standard 40-hour workweek. They start working at 9 a.m. and, other than a few short breaks, don't stop until 5 p.m.
The traditional American business hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, representing a workweek of five eight-hour days comprising 40 hours in total. These are the origin of the phrase 9-to-5, used to describe a conventional and possibly tedious job.
The 9-to-5 workday originated in the 1800s from the American Labor unions who were trying to protect workers rights. Back then, manufacturing employees were working about 100 hours each week. Then in the 1920s, the Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford introduced a 40-hour workweek.
Ordinarily, the hours to be used in computing the regular rate of pay may not exceed the legal maximum regular hours which, in most cases, is 8 hours per workday, 40 hours per workweek.
1) Standard
Employees also like the standard schedule because it's easy to plan for — they know they will be working from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. From an employer's perspective, this type of schedule is one of the easiest to fit into a 24-hour day.
Is working 8 hours a day realistic?
Though people usually work for 8 hours a day, no one is productive for that long. Scientists say the ideal daily working time is around 6 hours, and these should be concentrated in the morning. There are workers who boast about the long hours spent at the workplace as a mark of productivity.
On the other hand, working 10-hour shifts on a regular basis has some pitfalls. As the Occupational Safety and Health Administration explains, those longer working days and hours can lead to: Worker Fatigue. Increased Levels Of Stress.
Employee Overtime: Hours, Pay and Who is Covered. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) states that any work over 40 hours in a 168 hour period is counted as overtime, since the average American work week is 40 hours - that's eight hours per day for five days a week.
The average American adult works 38.7 hours per week.
That works out to 7.74 hours per weekday and 2012.4 hours per year. They say if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. For everyone else, it's estimated that you'll work 90,000 hours throughout your lifetime.
Is Working 8 Hours a Day Too Much? In general, most scientists seem to agree that 6 – 8 hours is the ideal working time. In fact a recent study showed that employees get sick less, have lower stress, and work harder, when their hours are closer to 6 per day.
The eight-hour day movement (also known as the 40-hour week movement or the short-time movement) was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses of working time.
