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Is 40 The New 30... When It Comes to the Workweek?

The saying “40 is the new 30” is popularly tied to how people feel about aging, but an Amazon.com pilot may offer a new spin on the phrase when it comes to work hours.

Select part-time employees of the the mega-online merchant will be allowed to work 30 hours a week at 75% of what full-time workers get, but will receive the same benefits as employees who work 40-hours a week, The Washington Post reports

The pilot will be limited to a few dozen employees on the tech product teams in human resources and the company does not plan to change its 40-hour work week company-wide, the Post reports. “We want to create a work environment that is tailored to a reduced schedule and still fosters success and career growth,” according to Amazon. “This initiative was created with Amazon’s diverse workforce in mind and the realization that the traditional full-time schedule may not be a ‘one size fits all’ model.”

The pilot announcement comes about a year after critics blasted Amazon when a New York Times article painted the company as one that encouraged employees to clock-in major hours with little vacation. One employee said when she was not able to work 80 hours a week due to having to take care of her father, she was seen as “a problem.” Soon after the article, the company’s senior vice president, Jay Carney, wrote a letter calling the story an inaccurate portrayal, the Washington Post notes.

Amazon did not say whether the New York Times article had influenced its pilot. But, Rita McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School, notes in the Washington Post that the New York Times article “was a huge blow, from an employer attractiveness point of view.” The pilot could signal Amazon testing new ways to attract talent, she notes.

Many companies do provide employees a four-day work week with flex hours, including Deloitte and KPMG, but don’t stray from mandating 40 hours. “A lot of companies have talked about wanting to lower hours but don’t seem to actually go about doing it,” says Ellen Galinsky, president and founder of the Families and Work Institute. She hopes that Amazon’s pilot helps to shatter a long-time stigma associated with working reduced hours.

“There has for a very long time been a stigma against working reduced hours, or part-time work,” Galinsky says. “Even names like that, ‘part-time’ or ‘reduced,’ make it seem like a deviation from the norm, like you’re doing less.”

McGrath said the pilot also might help Amazon win over more women who find it difficult to work a traditional 40-hour week due to child-care and other family responsibilities. If Amazon wants an idea of how a 30-hour workweek may turn out, it can look to Gothenburg, Sweden, according to an article from the New York Times

Svartedalens, a nursing home, has had a 30-hour work week for its employees (six hours a day instead of eight) with no cut in pay for more than a year. An audit released in April showed that the program greatly cut down on absenteeism and boosted productivity and employee health.

“We’ve had 40 years of a 40-hour workweek, and now we’re looking at a society with higher sick leaves and early retirement,” says Daniel Bernmar, leader of the Gothenburg City Council’s Left party. His group is heading up the 30-hour work week trial with hopes of making it a standard.

“We want a new discussion in Sweden about how work life should be to maintain a good welfare state for the next 40 years,” he says.

There are critics of the program who believe if the practice spreads across Sweden, it would reduce the nation’s competitiveness and hurt finances. In France, companies have bemoaned a government decision in 2000 to mandate a 35-hour work week, saying it has made them less competitive and led to billions in hiring and social costs.

But a three-year old Internet search optimization start-up in Stockholm that launched as a six-hour work day firm disagrees. The firm, Brath, named after its founder, Maria Brath, has 20 employees and has seen revenues and profits double each year. “We thought doing a shorter workweek would mean we’d have to hire more, but it hasn’t resulted in that because everyone works more efficiently,” she says. The shorter work day has led to employees looking for ways to be more efficient, understanding they still need to get the work done, she adds.

“We don’t send unnecessary emails or tie ourselves up in meetings,” says Thommy Ottinger, a pay-per-click specialist at the firm. “If you have only six hours to work, you don’t waste your time or other people’s time.”

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