Think a shorter workweek will make you happier? Maybe not, a new study suggests.
South Korea changed its labor regulations in 2004, reducing the work week to five days a week and 40 hours from the previous six-day, 44-hour week, providing a natural experiment to test whether working fewer hours would increase happiness.
Robert Rudolf, an assistant professor of economics at Korea University in Seoul, studied the period 1998 to 2008, when average working hours gradually declined by about 10 percent. His results appear online in The Journal of Happiness Studies.
Using data from an annual survey of 5,000 Korean households, Dr. Rudolf analyzed overall job satisfaction and overall satisfaction with life before and after the changes in working hours. Using a five-point scale, ranging from very dissatisfied to very satisfied, he found that for both sexes, a reduction in hours had no effect on job or life satisfaction.
So should we still aim to reduce working hours? Probably not, Dr. Rudolf said, but “I am a big fan of flexible working solutions with flex-time, part-time options, etc. In my opinion, higher personal freedom about their work flanked with well-designed performance targets will make workers both happier and more productive.”