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Half-Past Four Is the New Five O'Clock in More Efficient Workday (bloomberg.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The average American workday now concludes at 4:39 p.m., a notable 36 minutes earlier than it did just two years ago when the clock-out time hovered around 5:21 p.m, according to the latest data from the workforce analytics and productivity software company ActivTrak.

The new report tracked the workplace behaviors of over 200,000 employees across 777 companies. Despite the shorter workday, the data suggests that overall productivity has increased by about 2%. Per ActivTrak, employees now engage in focused, 24-minute spurts of productivity.

"I hope to see these numbers remain consistent year-over-year when it comes to workday span and productivity," said Gabriela Mauch, the head of ActivTrak's Productivity Lab. "These are healthy numbers. We've adapted to a traditional workday on average, while offering flexibility and fluidity in a way that meets employees where they are." Seasonal fluctuations are another notable factor, the report found. Workers tend to put in longer hours during August and December. The August increase aligns with employees returning from vacation and starting to scramble to meet end-of-year goals, Mauch said. It may be that organizations also see the month of December as another chance to catch up, she added.

Half-Past Four Is the New Five O'Clock in More Efficient Workday More | Reply

Half-Past Four Is the New Five O'Clock in More Efficient Workday

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  • 4:20 PM. That's the unofficial end of the workday these days.

  • Is there a such thing as a margin of error for a productivity software company? Maybe a few people just hit "reply all" on accident to a company email

  • When's clock-in? (Score:3)

    by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2025 @12:22PM (#65225577)
    Personally over the last three years my (unofficial) start time has become an hour earlier, and my (official) end-of-day is a half-hour earlier.

    Sometimes I duck out before official EoD, but my work-day is always longer than it used to be, and always longer than it's required to be. I enjoy more productivity early in the morning before everyone else comes in and starts asking questions.

    • I did almost the same for the last 5 years too, but mainly to avoid traffic. Arrived some 45 min earlier and left 30 min before everybody. Traffic time went down by almost half and I even saved gas.

    • Yep (Score:2)

      by abulafia ( 7826 )
      We went remote during Covid and stayed that way - moved to a much smaller office that's really only good for meetings and told hiring managers they could hire from from anywhere if they wanted, and most did.

      About half my team starts either one or two hours before I do (we were a Bay Area startup), so that's pushed the start of day back, and I'm usually at my machine by about 8 now.

      Still work to about 6 most days, but I also do more non-work stuff during the day. Works out well for me - I have difficult

  • Its because people are fucking off early because they realize nobody will notice.
    • Got a citation for that?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        DOGE?

      • me, my wife - we can observe peoples availability easily enough on our teams at work - and people are fucking off and not doing their work a LOT.... I don't understand why they aren't being fired, but maybe that's because our managers fuck off too.

        • I don't understand why they aren't being fired, but maybe that's because our managers fuck off too.

          Or maybe your assessment is simply incorrect.

    • You mean half-past the monkeys ass (quarter to his balls).

    • If I start at 7:30a because I don't need to shower before work or commute. Then yeah, I'm generally going to cut out at 4pm. The only reason I'm at work right now is because I have a meeting that lasts until 5pm. Then I have another meeting at 9pm, and I need to get some chores and cooking done in that "free" time.

  • Bad Math? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2025 @12:48PM (#65225629) Homepage Journal

    By my math, 4:39 is 42 minutes earlier that 5:21.

  • I would say it can be a different story to compare someone's job from 2010 to a job now. Mainly because even there have not been any real major additions, there has been a lot of automation to speed up things. For example, an accountant is likely having a different workflow now than they did a few years ago when everything was manually entered into Peachtree. Similar when development used Visual Sourcesafe versus Git pull requests.

    Given the same unit of time, the amount of work done has increased for the

  • If you look at worker productivity metrics https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org] and how they've grown since we implemented the 40 hour work week back in 1940 it becomes pretty obvious we are WELL passed the time of being due for another reduction in our work week (either that or bunch more money). Instead these gains have gone almost entirely to our affluent who are wealthier than ever.

  • Downtime productivity. (Score:3)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2025 @01:45PM (#65225759)

    It's not about hours. It's about having the time to ignore other people (email, messengers) and focus, to actually do your job instead of being constantly disturbed.

    I'm really privileged to have decent core hours at work of 10 to 3pm so I work 7 till 3pm and I always do my best work between 7am and 10am before everyone else comes online.

    Even if anything runs over, I'm always done with work by 4pm at the latest.

  • Because working from home (Score:3)

    by eth1 ( 94901 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2025 @01:49PM (#65225781)

    When I had to go to the office, I'd have to wake up around 0630 to get there around 0830.

    Now, WFH, I get an extra hour of sleep AND log in 45 min earlier. Waking up at a more natural time (for me) could probably explain 2% extra productivity by itself.

    Starting earlier naturally leads to quitting earlier. I'm guessing there's more than enough people like me these days to move the average.

  • December isn't for catching up. It's everybody working their asses off so they don't get screwed over time off for Christmas.
  • I assume they are getting this data by noting when people log off or turn off their computers. It is still possible to do useful work without using one of those machines. When I was working, I sometimes left my computer running overnight. It was screen locked and in secured building, so I was not particularly concerned about unauthorized use. All in all, I am not sure if they are measuring anything meaningful.

  • I am off the clock at 4:30. It's not because I have a shorter workday. It's because I "clock in" (I don't literally, I submit a timecard via a web tool every pay period) at 7:30.

  • "I hope to see these numbers remain consistent year-over-year"
    Why the fork does she care? Would she suffer from disillusionment if the numbers changed?
    clickbait. it's all clickbait.

    • She cares because she reports your hours directly to your boss.

      And, while we're on the subject, what were you doing in the 20 minutes you were away from your screen at 3pm last Thursday?

  • Ummmmm, whatchew got, some kind of 54 minutes per hour clock, eh?

    "The average American workday now concludes at 4:39 p.m., a notable 36 minutes earlier than it did just two years ago when the clock-out time hovered around 5:21 p.m"

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