Is a 30-hour work weeks all it's cracked up to be?

Amazon announced earlier this week it’d be piloting a 30-hour workweek in the near future with a few dozen employees.

The program, focused on teams working on tech products within the human resources division, would put employees on a Monday to Thursday workweek, clocking in at 10 a.m. and out the door by 2 p.m. with additional flex hours. Salaries would reflect the reduced workload with employees taking a 25 per cent pay cut versus their 40-hour workweek peers.

“We want to create a work environment that is tailored to a reduced schedule and still fosters success and career growth,” said the company in a posting on the informational seminar. “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.”

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for the cynics to come out, saying the move had ulterior motives or that it was just doing it to pay employees lower rates. On one hand, it’s difficult to blame them given the damaging exposé on Amazon’s alleged cutthroat and “bruising” culture that ran in the New York Times last August. But Scott Schieman, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto and a prominent work-life balance researcher, suspects part of that cynicism surrounding the concept of a 30-hour work week itself comes from North American cultural attitudes towards work as a status symbol of sorts.

“The bottom line is workers make a choice but when they make those choices they’re not doing that in a vacuum they’re doing it in a culture,” he says. “And if that culture is like ‘yeah go ahead, cut back, we’ll even cut your pay,’ something is giving – there’s always a sacrifice, there’s always a tradeoff and it’s not just a tradeoff in terms of pay.”

Not to say Schieman doesn’t support work-life balance, he just points out that we live in a culture where overtly we put an increasing emphasis on “working less and focusing on personal growth” yet many of those deep set constitutions of what make an ideal worker – tireless dedication and devotion to an institution – persist.

“One of the main reasons why these kinds of policies don’t work is because not everybody buys into the idea of working less,” explains Schieman. “And in a competitive environment or workplace where some people are going to look like they’re all in and the ideal worker (that’s) going to put them a little bit more on edge.”

In other words, flexibility might fit the employee’s needs but does it fit the organization’s needs? Can the work get done in 30 hours? How will the full-time workers feel?

“At the end of the day you’re coming up with less status… it’s a status cut and if you’re okay with that it’s fine but a lot of people aren’t and I think that’s why people say there’s a stigma associated with behind anything but full time,” says the sociologist. “Frankly, in some occupations like high status lawyers, if you’re not working 60-plus hours, you’re not working.”

From his perspective, this cultural constitution is one of the barriers for why this sort of program – the 30-hour workweek – isn’t more prominent despite organizations’ growing fascination with flexible work hours.

Make no mistake, Canadians do place high value on flexibility in the workplace; a recent survey by Regus Canada found 61 per cent of respondents would turn down a role that offered no flexibility.

But whether or not Amazon’s 30-hour workweek model, which the company already said will not be rolled out organization-wide, could work within the context of Canada’ organizational culture is up in the air. You’d need to look at it on a case-by-case basis, says Schieman. And even then, flexibility carries its own status symbol adds the sociologist, pointing to that stereotype of the politician, athlete or CEO who retires their high octane life style in favour of “spending more time with the family.”

“I’d love for somebody to say ‘I’m retiring to spend more time with my dog,’ ” says Schieman chuckling. “People do make those choices but I think it’s a myth to suggest that at the end of the day there’s no price to pay for that choice… you just have to be comfortable with that.”