Why do most employees have to work at least eight hours a day? What do they really accomplish in those hours? Can the working day be reduced to less? These are some of the questions that come to mind when talking about the optimal number of working hours and rest?

Since the 1920s, the Western world has set the rules of the work system for eight hours a day, and this is still the standard system worldwide to this day.

However, many employees and a few employers are demanding a reconsideration of this system because they see it as a burden on the health and psychological well-being of the employee and constrain the productivity of the organization at the same time.

Some statistics support what rebels are going through on the traditional labor system. Of the eight hours a day, a staff member is only produced for about three hours, according to a survey of about 2,000 employees in Britain in 2016. What do employees occupy in the remaining hours?

Here is the answer, according to the site "you" of the British study:

1. Online news sites (1 hour and 5 minutes)
2-Browse social networking sites (44 minutes)
3. Discussion of non-working matters with colleagues (40 minutes)
4. Find a new job (26 minutes)
5. Take a break for smoking (23 minutes)
6. Make phone calls to family or friends (18 minutes)
7. Hot drinks (17 minutes)
8-Exchange messages via phone or instant messaging applications (14 minutes)
9. Eat Snacks (eight minutes)
10. Prepare food in the office (seven minutes)

Many hours of work wasted in vain (Reuters)

It may therefore be logical to reconsider the eight-hour system, especially since it did not arise in the age of information, artificial intelligence and enormous technical potential, but arose in different circumstances.

How did the eight-hour system originate?
The eight-hour call was the cry of workers who had been chased by decades of hard labor in the shadow of the industrial revolution. They worked an average of 100 hours a week, about 17 hours a day, taking into account that the working week was six days rather than five.

In the early 19th century, Labor leaders raised the banner of change, including Welsh activist Robert Owen, who in 1817 called "eight hours of work, eight hours of recreation, eight hours of rest."

In the early 20th century, a few Western companies responded to the labor struggle and began to turn into the eight-hour system. But it was only when he was adopted by Henry Ford in the United States in 1926 that he received his attention and reputation.

Ford decided to change the work system to forty hours per week over five days, while retaining the salaries of workers as they are.

This was a revolutionary decision, in keeping with the nature of the man who set up the Ford Motor Company and was able to transform the car from a wondrous invention possessed by the elite into a commodity widely made available to members of the middle class.

Henry Ford Founds Pioneer in Automotive Industry (Getty Images)

Ford may have been merciful to the workers and keen on their health, but another factor that made him make this decision was profits. Ford realized that in order to make profits, consumers must buy goods, and for consumers to go shopping they must have a chance to relax, and that would require more time out of business.

"Leisure is an indispensable element for the consumer market to grow, because people who work have enough time to use consumer goods, including cars," Ford said in an interview with The Worlds magazine in 1926.

In 1940, the US Congress passed legislation setting working hours 40 hours a week over five days, becoming a global standard ever since.

Is there another revolution?
Now, nearly 100 years after the Ford revolution, employees, activists and business owners see it is time for a new revolution. Technology and artificial intelligence have evolved to a degree that is supposed to make life easier for human beings, who are now suffering from health and psychological well-being.

The new revolution calls for labor unions, left-wing forces and bold companies in some Western countries. Some companies cut the number of weekly working days from five to four while maintaining the same wages, seeing that this increases employee productivity and motivation and reduces stress.

In Britain, the main union of trade unions is trying to push the entire country to adopt a four-day workweek at the end of the century, an effort supported by the opposition Labor Party.

In Japan there are employees working "to death" (Reuters)

In Sweden, the municipality of Gothenburg applied a six-hour trial system at a nursing home, describing the experiment as successful by its supervisors, but political considerations prevented it from circulating.

In fact, working hours between developed peoples and nations that continue to make their way to development and decent living vary.

Therefore, talking about reducing the working hours to forty hours per week may be repulsed by millions of people in non-developed countries, where clear legal standards for regulating hours of work are absent, and where some workers are still struggling for more than sixty hours a week.

Even in developed countries, the culture of labor is not the same. There are French people who work about 35 hours a week and appreciate the value of rest and enjoyment of life. In contrast, there are Japanese, most of whom may work for a similar number of hours according to statistics, but some "work to death" They made the word "karoshi" meaning death from work.