The time we spend working during our lives is only surpassed by sleeping. And this time at work is mostly perceived negatively by people, with feelings of being miserable at work, unsatisfied and disengaged from work context. This represents a societal risk, and several solutions are being studied and implemented at different levels. Working time reduction (WTR) is not an emerging issue, but its discussion is increasingly in the mainstream of the media, society, and organizational context. The implementation of a reduction in the number of working time hours is commonly presented as to providing several benefits for individual, organizations, and the society. This study aims to review the theoretical and empirical effects of WTR and, then to confront these effects with workers’ expectations and experiences. A questionnaire was applied to Portuguese workers whose working hours were not reduced (n = 61), workers with WTR experience (n = 36) and managers (n = 47), first exploring the workers and managers expectations, and then comparing them with workers who had the experience of WTR. In general, the attitudes are favorable to reduce the number of hours and to changes in mode of weekly working time. Considering societal impact, reducing working hours is perceived has having more positive effects, although some negative impacts are identified. We 42 also found different expectations and experiences among the three categories of participants. Those without WTR consider that companies’ competitiveness will decrease if WTR is implemented, while those having already a WTR experience consider that competitiveness has in fact increased. Additionally, participants with WTR experience report that the extra time has leading to an increase in consumption, what is not predicted by those not having WTR experience.

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Working Time Reduction,Expectations,Experiences,Societal impact