Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is reportedly testing out a shorter work week for some of its employees.
Amazon’s new shorter work week test will have small technical teams that only work for 30 hours per week. These employees will share the same benefits as their 40-hour coworkers, but will only receive 75% of the salaried pay that they do.
The new Amazon test isn’t going to expand to the entire company and will only include a few select employees. Even the managers of these teams will only work 30 hours a week. However, there’s room for additional hours and employees can transition to full time at their discretion.
Amazon is currently hiring part time workers to be part of the 30-hour work week from inside and outside of the company. The employees will work from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. from Monday through Thursday. The work is related to tech products in the human resource division of the online retailer and is designed to see if different schedules fit different workers better, reports The Washington Post.
“”It offers an opportunity to tap into people that you wouldn’t normally because of the way you structure your workweek,” Rita McGrath. a Columbia Business School professor that deals in strategy and innovation, told The Washington Post.
The change at Amazon may have less to do with its work hours and more to do with changes in how companies operate. Other reports have suggested that work weeks are shrinking as automation in the tech industry expands. The shorter work weeks could possibly be used to help fight income inequality that could be created by this by spreading out the work more evenly.
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