This past spring in New Zealand, a financial-management firm called Perpetual Guardian reduced its employees' workweek from 40 to 32 hours and asked researchers to analyze the impact on productivity. The results were surprising: Employees actually got more work done than before within the tighter time frame. “Supervisors said staff were more creative, their attendance was better, they were on time, and they didn’t leave early or take long breaks,” Auckland University of Technology researcher Jarrod Haar told The New York Times. “They worked out where they were wasting time and worked smarter, not harder." Workers were also more satisfied with their enhanced work-life balance, as they exercised, gardened, cooked, and spent more time with their families.
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