The year 2018 began for our employees with new personnel regulations in which we introduced many new things—all for their benefit, of course. Among other things, we switched from a 42.5-hour week to a 40-hour week. But why? And how were we able to convince management to accept the "missing" 2.5 working hours per week, which amounts to almost 900 missing working hours per month across the entire company?

A question of mindset

Of course, everyone was aware that if you look at the issue purely from a numerical perspective, the math doesn't add up. With this change, all employees are now actually working only 94% of the time for the same pay as before. Not bad, I would say. However, when it comes to people, it's not always a simple calculation, especially when it comes to human performance. Sure, you can run a machine 2.5 hours longer per week and it will be 2.5 hours more productive per week, which in turn means that you can charge the customer 2.5 hours more and generate more revenue. But no one in this world works that way; no one is exactly that much more productive just because they have to sit in the office longer. And that is precisely the principle behind why we talked about the 40-hour week. We asked ourselves what a person needs to be productive and efficient, to be creative, to develop new ideas and products, to be committed to the company, and to think and act in the interests of the company and the community. These questions were the first step in the mindset change. Why? Because we started asking these questions in the first place.

Our statement, our goal

We wanted to make a statement by introducing the 40-hour week. It is extremely important to us that the people who work for us every day are mentally and physically healthy. This requires a good balance between work and leisure time. It is important to us that everyone feels comfortable with us and is therefore productive. Because, as everyone knows on a rational level, healthy and committed employees make happy customers, and happy customers generate more sales, and so on and so forth. However, really feeling and living this principle to the fullest, i.e., the mindset, requires a lot of (HR) work.

We are aware that "simply" introducing a 40-hour week will not create a new working environment or "achieve" employee health and satisfaction, but it is a first step on a long journey toward our vision—starting tomorrow's world today.