The debate over ending Brazil’s 6×1 work schedule and reducing the standard workweek to 40 hours has sparked intense discussion across the country. On one hand, business leaders warn that the change could hurt the economy by increasing labor costs and driving more workers into the informal sector. On the other, growing evidence suggests that excessively long working hours undermine business performance itself, as chronic fatigue quietly erodes productivity long before it becomes a legal issue.

In an exclusive interview with Endosfera, Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor at Stanford University and one of the world’s leading experts on management, challenges the long-held assumption that working longer hours leads to better results.

The biology of 6×1 work schedule

According to Pfeffer, there is extensive medical literature documenting the harm caused by excessive working hours. Research has consistently linked long workweeks to cardiovascular disease and serious sleep disorders. As he explains:

“Working longer hours beyond a certain point (more than 40 hours) is detrimental to health. There is almost a dose-response relationship with hypertension. The longer the working hours, the higher the blood pressure. Long working hours also interfere with sleep, and sleep is essential for the proper functioning of the immune system.”

The social cost of the 6×1 work schedule (and the role of Brazil’s NR-1 regulation)

Pfeffer uses the concept of “social pollution” to explain how burnout generated inside organizations extends far beyond the workplace. The term describes the broader social consequences of unhealthy work practices, affecting families, communities, and individual well-being.

In his view, the current model allows organizations to capture the short-term financial gains of overwork while shifting the costs of illness onto society. As he puts it:

“If you allow me to dump toxic waste into the air, it doesn’t become my problem—it becomes everyone’s problem. If you allow me to engage in social pollution, then we’ll have family problems and disease. That becomes society’s problem because the costs have been externalized.”

In countries such as Brazil, where healthcare is publicly funded, those costs are ultimately shared by society as a whole. At the same time, Brazil has recently introduced an important regulatory safeguard: the updated NR-1 regulation now requires companies to identify and assess psychosocial risks, making employers directly responsible for managing mental health risks in the workplace.

The productivity paradox

According to Pfeffer, one of the biggest mistakes organizations make is trying to measure twenty-first-century productivity using standards inherited from the agricultural era. In purely physical work, output increases more or less proportionally with time spent working. In knowledge work, however, that relationship breaks down because the human mind depends on recovery to perform at its best.

“If you’re plowing fields, the more hours you plow, the more fields get plowed. But in today’s world, where most work is intellectual (thinking rather than doing), the idea that longer working hours automatically produce better results is simply not correct.”

The consequences of this misconception become evident in operational failures. Exhausted professionals make more mistakes, which lead to rework and lower productivity. In practice, the time companies believe they gain by extending working hours is often lost to rework and avoidable mistakes.

This effect can also be observed in retail and customer service jobs that include periods of downtime throughout the day. Being physically present at work and remaining constantly alert prevents genuine recovery.

“People may not be actively working every nanosecond, but they’re still at work. They’re not resting, they’re not enjoying leisure time, and they’re not with their families.”

Long working hours are not the same as high performance

For Pfeffer, productivity should not be viewed as the maximum extraction of human effort. Instead, it is the natural outcome of teams that are physically and psychologically healthy. He draws a direct comparison with professional sports:

“If you were coaching a sports team, you’d care deeply about your athletes’ recovery. You wouldn’t push them to exhaustion so they would step onto the field already worn out. You would do everything possible to ensure they were at their best when it mattered most. After all, productivity is a function of physical and mental well-being.”

Putting these ideas into practice

From this perspective, designing operational routines becomes part of building sustainable high performance. Understanding how teams work and recognizing that different people perform best at different times of the day allow organizations to create more effective ways of working.

Carla Petry, Partner and COO at Santo de Casa Endomarketing, argues that organizations should embrace asynchronous work whenever possible. This approach allows people to organize part of their workday according to their own natural rhythms and peak performance.

“While it may not yet be possible to completely transform today’s models of work, organizations can adopt alternatives that promote greater flexibility and well-being. At Santo de Casa, for example, some of our teams work on different schedules with exactly this purpose: to support people’s well-being, strengthen engagement, and maintain the quality standards we expect from our teams.”