When we think about the future of work, one of the most important — and overlooked — dimensions is time. Time has fascinated us as human beings probably since the beginning. If you search for quotes about time, you’ll find thousands from famous and not-so-famous people. They talk about how valuable time is, how fleeting it can be, how we never seem to have enough of it, and yet, how we often don’t use it as effectively as we could. So let’s talk about how we use our time. We use it for work, of course, but also for family, friends, hobbies — for life. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a real shift in how people think about time, especially in the context of work. Around the world, leaders and organizations have started asking: how much time should people spend working? How much should they be in the office? And here’s a key question: does more time spent working actually mean higher productivity?

You’d think the answer would be simple. But it isn’t. Because the data just doesn’t support the idea that more hours equal more productivity. In fact, we’ve seen quite the opposite. Managers are actually pretty poor at judging who’s productive and who isn’t. There’s a study from about a decade ago that looked at consulting firms, and it found that managers couldn’t tell the difference between people who actually worked 80-hour weeks and those who just pretended to.

This has led to some of the behaviours we see now: performative busyness, "quiet quitting," "coffee badging"; people give the appearance of working long and hard. But what does the research say about true productivity? One study showed that the most productive employees tend to work in concentrated bursts, about 52 minutes of focused work followed by a 17-minute break. Research also shows that we fill up the time we have. If you’re given eight hours, you stretch three hours of actual work across the whole day. Even before the pandemic, data showed that the average employee spent about three hours per eight-hour day doing actual work. So the question becomes: how do we better use our time, both as individuals and organizations?

To think about where we’re going, it helps to look back. A hundred years ago, Henry Ford made a radical change when he implemented the five-day workweek and the eight-hour workday. Before that, people worked six or seven days a week — 10, 12, even 16 hours a day. Ford realized that giving people more leisure time not only improved productivity, it also made them more likely to spend money on the products being made. And the result? The next century became the most productive time in human history. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. We were told to stay home, to distance ourselves. It was a difficult time, no question. But one silver lining was that it forced us to re-evaluate how we work. Remote work became the norm, and new models like hybrid work suddenly became possible.

Before the pandemic, the term "hybrid" wasn’t really used in the context of work. It emerged in response to these new realities. During the peak of the pandemic, around 40 per cent of Canadians were working remotely. Now, a few years later, we’ve stabilized: about 12 to 15 per cent of workers are in hybrid roles, and another 12 per cent are fully remote. That’s double what it was before COVID. What we expected to happen gradually, over years, got accelerated overnight.

Companies realized they didn’t have to stick to the old cookie-cutter format of five days in the office. Most commonly now, we see people in the office two or three days a week. Research shows hybrid work often leads to better performance, greater employee satisfaction, more engagement, and stronger recruitment outcomes. But — and this is important — it only works when it’s implemented properly. Haphazard hybrid doesn’t work. You need planning and change management.

One model that has also gained a lot of traction is the four-day workweek. We’ve seen versions of this before. Back in the 1960s and 70s, some organizations tried to compress 40 hours into four days. That didn’t work — people were exhausted. More recently, we’ve seen trials in Sweden with six-hour days, and in Iceland, where they trialled four-day weeks. The results were generally positive: productivity didn’t decline and employee well-being improved.

During and after the pandemic, my colleagues and I — through consultancy firm Work Time Revolution — worked with organizations to transition to reduced-hour models. And we found that the ones that succeeded had a few things in common. First, they understood their organizations deeply. They collected data, planned thoughtfully and treated the shift as a serious change initiative.

Communication was key — not just internally, but also with external stakeholders. Scheduling, HR policies, pay, benefits — all of that had to be figured out. They set clear metrics, tracked performance before and after, and used the data to inform decisions. Critically, they didn’t see the reduced-hour model as a cure-all. If there were existing problems — poor culture, bad processes — those had to be addressed as part of the shift. The most successful companies used the transition as a chance to fix what wasn’t working.

Ultimately, what drives effective work models — whether hybrid, remote or reduced-hour — are things like trust and collaboration. Leadership matters more than ever. Leaders have to lean in, show belief in the model, and empower their teams. But that doesn’t mean giving unlimited freedom. Too much autonomy can lead to stress. What we need is structured autonomy: a clear framework that supports people, but gives them enough flexibility to adapt and thrive.

The organizations that did this very well realized that none of these models are a magic bullet. If you had issues with culture process or change management before, switching to hybrid or a four-day week isn’t going to solve them. But some used the transition as a way to address those deeper problems. They saw it as an opportunity to make broader improvements. And that doubled their chances of success.

Working smarter is a goal everyone can get behind. Let’s stop measuring time and start measuring outcomes. Let’s use new technologies and new thinking to create work environments where people can truly be at their best. That’s the future, and it starts with how we think about time.

This article originally appeared in the fall 2025 issue of the Rotman Management magazine.