The Netherlands still has the world's shortest working week

If you ask most people whether they'd like to work fewer hours in a week, they'd probably say yes.

Lots of people have jobs that they enjoy but that doesn't mean that having an extra day off each week wouldn't be welcomed by plenty.

If you've got to be back at work on the Monday, then your Sunday evenings can be spent watching that clock tick down until bedtime and another five day stretch before you get to go to sleep without a blaring alarm to greet you in the morning.

However, if you've also got the next day off then you're really feeling the benefits of that Sunday and you head back into work refreshed, recharged and ready to get back to it, or so the theory goes.

A shorter working week could be the future of employment and quite a few places are giving it a go, with lots of those who've tested it finding that people working less actually end up doing better in the long run.

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Testing the theory is all fine and dandy in the UK, but there are some countries which already work significantly fewer hours and enjoy doing it.

And the top spot on the list goes to The Netherlands, that delightfully flat nation of impressive flood control systems and hugely enviable cycling infrastructure.

It's known for a lot of other things, but if we were to list the nice things about The Netherlands then we'd be here all day, so let's focus on envying their 29-hour average work week instead.

That's near enough what the campaigners calling for a four day working week are asking for and it seems to work pretty well in the Netherlands.

One of the main reasons behind this short working week is because workers have the right to choose part-time hours if they want, while nobody can be required to work more than 12 hours a day, 60 hours a week or Sundays by law.

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Part-time working is actually really popular in The Netherlands with statistics showing that the part-time workforce had increased to nearly 40,000 earlier this year.

This working arrangement has been the case for a while and Dutch people seem to be happy with it.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, the average hours worked per week hover between 36 and 37 hours for the standard working Brit.

There are currently efforts to bring this down with a four day working week and the recent trials that a number of companies held have been a positive step towards it.

A vast majority of companies said they'd stick with it for the future as employees suffered from significantly lower levels of burnout and far fewer sick days were used.

Companies that tried paying their staff the same but working less also found that their revenue actually increased.

Maybe it's time we all went Dutch.

Topics: UK News, World News, News

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker