Working time reduction: barriers, challenges, benefits and policy implications

Reduction of the working time, understood as a coordinated reduction in weekly working hours concentrated into an extra free day per week without a corresponding decrease in pay, has existed in the economic debate for more than a century, yet much of its potential impact on economic, social, and environmental aspects remains unexplored.

Recently, various initiatives at national, company, and sectoral levels have been launched to test the employment and societal outcomes of these reduced working arrangements. Past experiences generally show some positive evidence on workers’ well-being and wages, with marginal impacts on employment levels, but mixed outcomes regarding productivity. Yet, understanding the feasibility of working time reduction across different sectors and occupations is key to assessing its impacts on inequality, societal fairness, and overall economic growth. Moreover, the gender perspective and impacts on workforce inclusion in the working time reduction context is an area that is yet to be thoroughly understood. There is a wide range of environmental outcomes from working time reduction to be also considered, including energy costs and savings, energy poverty, and consumption patterns.

More insights are needed to understand the full battery of enablers, barriers, benefits, challenges, and policy implications arising from implementation of working time reduction, including at organisational level, across a diverse variety of sectors.

While feeding into the expected outcomes, the research project should assess the impacts of working time reduction along at least two out of the three axes: economic, social, and environmental.

These may include but are not limited to the following channels:

• Social impacts on workers, including well-being at the workplace, health outcomes (including stress levels), work-life balance, gendered employment outcomes, labour market inclusion;
• Economic impacts, including effects on productivity, employment, economic growth, hiring and staff retention, absenteeism, firm costs, overall economic demand, innovation;
• Environmental impacts, including on energy expenditures and savings, energy poverty, emission reduction, consumption patterns, sustainable lifestyles.

Applicants are encouraged to employ a variety of SSH research methods, including quantitative micro-economic analysis or behavioural and other experimental research methods.

Proposers may consider the data offered by European Research Infrastructures in the social sciences domain[[ ri-portfolio.esfri.eu/ri-portfolio/table/]].

Where applicable, proposals should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud, as well as data from relevant Data Spaces. Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this topic is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).