Nowadays, there are a considerable number of people who believe that employees should start to work fewer hours per week, whereas others argue that it might lead to slow economic growth and less productivity. This essay will discuss both of these points of view and argue in favour of the former.
On the one hand, it is clear that reducing the amount of time spent working can negatively affect productivity and future prosperity for multiple reasons. Although a majority of individuals would prefer to work fewer hours per week, the productivity level can decrease because of it. Additionally, working more can give faster results, and giving employees less work time could be the first step to slowing the economy of a country. For example, according to new research, the idea of allowing employees to work only fewer hours per week negatively affected the whole economy of the country because of slow development in some fields. However, I believe that working fewer hours per week has more benefits.
On the other hand, workers should work fewer hours per week in order to prevent some health issues and deal with burnout. This means that some individuals suffer from health problems related to work, since companies mostly tend to give employees an almost unlimited amount of work. Mental health issues such as stress, depression, or poor work-life balance cannot be avoided if people do not reduce the amount of time they spend on this. Moreover, burnout is another problem that workers have to deal with in today’s life. This issue occurs because of the same reason. For instance, according to Oxford research, in the last 5 years, companies who have allowed their employees to work fewer hours per week have decreased the percentage of workers who suffer from health-related issues.
In conclusion, even though employees might give slow results or negatively affect the productivity of workers by working fewer hours per week, it allows them to prevent some significant health issues.