Featuring scholarly and practitioner insights from HR and people leaders, industry experts, and researchers.

Reduced working time has emerged as a central topic in modern management, driven by proposed legislation like the U.S. Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act and widespread international pilots. Recent empirical research, including a significant multi-country study published in Nature Human Behavior, demonstrates that income-preserving reductions in work hours significantly enhance employee wellbeing, physical health, and job satisfaction while maintaining overall productivity and boosting talent retention. However, achieving these positive outcomes is not automatic, as simple schedule compression often introduces work intensification and fatigue rather than genuine recovery. Successfully implementing shorter hours requires treating the change as a work-design intervention by eliminating low-value tasks, tailoring schedules to operational demands, and establishing rigorous measurement metrics. Ultimately, organizations must proactively build time capability to manage working hours strategically, ensuring that productivity gains and regulatory shifts are navigated effectively regardless of legislative mandates.

Reduced working time has emerged as a central topic in modern management, driven by proposed legislation like the U.S. Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act and widespread international pilots. Recent empirical research, including a significant multi-country study published in Nature Human Behavior, demonstrates that income-preserving reductions in work hours significantly enhance employee wellbeing, physical health, and job satisfaction while maintaining overall productivity and boosting talent retention. However, achieving these positive outcomes is not automatic, as simple schedule compression often introduces work intensification and fatigue rather than genuine recovery. Successfully implementing shorter hours requires treating the change as a work-design intervention by eliminating low-value tasks, tailoring schedules to operational demands, and establishing rigorous measurement metrics. Ultimately, organizations must proactively build time capability to manage working hours strategically, ensuring that productivity gains and regulatory shifts are navigated effectively regardless of legislative mandates.

In this HCI Webinar, I talk with Sam Mandel about driving compassionate, forward-thinking health care. Sam Mandel is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles and a driving force in compassionate, forward-thinking mental health care. His commitment to supporting others began early when, at twelve years old, he volunteered at a teen suicide prevention hotline. That formative experience sparked a lifelong dedication to mental health advocacy and ultimately led him to co-found Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles in 2014 alongside his father, Dr. Steven L. Mandel. Sam is a recognized voice in innovative psychiatry and ketamine infusion therapy. He has been featured in Entrepreneur’s Top 10 Inspiring Healthcare Entrepreneurs to Watch and honored by MSN as an Entrepreneur Leading the Business Frontier. He is also a two-time Stevie Award recipient for Best Entrepreneur and Thought Leader of the Year at the American Business Awards. Major media outlets frequently seek out Sam for commentary, and he regularly speaks at scientific conferences and industry events on the current state and future of mental health care. Under Sam’s leadership, Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles has delivered more than 35,000 ketamine infusions to over 6,000 patients, helping establish one of the field's most respected standards of care. His work continues to shape the future of mental health care through a commitment to clinical excellence, ethical leadership, and genuine compassion for the individuals and families KCLA serves. Outside of the clinic, Sam enjoys weightlifting, spending time in nature, attending concerts, dancing, snowboarding, traveling, and being with friends and family.

Reduced working time has emerged as a central topic in modern management, driven by proposed legislation like the U.S. Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act and widespread international pilots. Recent empirical research, including a significant multi-country study published in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrates that income-preserving reductions in work hours significantly enhance employee wellbeing, physical health, and job satisfaction while maintaining overall productivity and boosting talent retention. However, achieving these positive outcomes is not automatic, as simple schedule compression often introduces work intensification and fatigue rather than genuine recovery. Successfully implementing shorter hours requires treating the change as a work-design intervention by eliminating low-value tasks, tailoring schedules to operational demands, and establishing rigorous measurement metrics. Ultimately, organizations must proactively build time capability to manage working hours strategically, ensuring that productivity gains and regulatory shifts are navigated effectively regardless of legislative mandates.

Reduced working time has emerged as a central topic in modern management, driven by proposed legislation like the U.S. Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act and widespread international pilots. Recent empirical research, including a significant multi-country study published in Nature Human Behavior, demonstrates that income-preserving reductions in work hours significantly enhance employee wellbeing, physical health, and job satisfaction while maintaining overall productivity and boosting talent retention. However, achieving these positive outcomes is not automatic, as simple schedule compression often introduces work intensification and fatigue rather than genuine recovery. Successfully implementing shorter hours requires treating the change as a work-design intervention by eliminating low-value tasks, tailoring schedules to operational demands, and establishing rigorous measurement metrics. Ultimately, organizations must proactively build time capability to manage working hours strategically, ensuring that productivity gains and regulatory shifts are navigated effectively regardless of legislative mandates.

Abstract: In September 2026, the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act was reintroduced in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, proposing to lower the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime threshold from 40 to 32 hours over four years without any reduction in pay. Poland's government, meanwhile, is midway through a state-funded pilot of shorter working time across 90 employers. This article examines what the accumulated evidence on reduced working time actually shows for organizations and workers. It synthesizes findings from a multi-country study of 141 organizations published in Nature Human Behavior, national and public-sector pilots in the United Kingdom, Iceland, Portugal, Germany, and Scotland, and documented organizational experiences ranging from banking to automotive manufacturing to elder care. The evidence suggests that well-designed, income-preserving reductions in hours improve burnout, job satisfaction, and health while largely sustaining performance, but that results depend on redesigning work first, matching the model to the work, measuring rigorously, guarding against intensification, and sharing gains fairly. The article offers evidence-based responses and a framework for building durable work-time capability.

Abstract: Menopause affects a large share of the workforce at the point in their careers when experience, judgment, and leadership potential are often at their peak, yet most organizations still treat it as a private matter. This article reviews recent survey evidence from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, peer-reviewed research on menopause and work, and regulatory developments, including the UK's move toward mandatory menopause action plans for large employers from spring 2027. The evidence suggests that symptoms alone do not determine work outcomes; job stress, role clarity, physical conditions, manager behavior, and the fairness of absence and performance processes shape whether women stay, progress, or leave. The article sets out five evidence-based responses: redesigning the physical and psychosocial work environment, making flexibility a default adjustment, equipping line managers, connecting employees to effective care, and making policies fair under pressure. It illustrates each with documented organizational practice and closes with guidance on building durable, life-stage-inclusive capability.

Recent studies and regulatory developments reveal that menopause is a critical retention issue causing experienced women in midlife to quietly step back from careers or leave the workforce entirely due to unsupported physical and psychological symptoms. Organizations frequently experience a perception and disclosure gap, where leadership vastly overestimates internal support while employees remain silent out of stigma and fear of being viewed as older or less capable. To combat this hidden talent drain, the literature emphasizes that symptoms are deeply influenced by workplace conditions, meaning employers can successfully keep women thriving by fixing physical environments and job stress. Recommended organizational strategies include establishing default flexibility, training line managers to handle supportive conversations, connecting staff to effective care, and ensuring fair HR policies under pressure. Ultimately, progressive leaders must treat menopause inclusion not as a niche wellbeing topic, but as a core test of talent retention and life-stage design for the entire workforce.