Most employees aren’t productive the whole workday. HR can help them get the most out of it.

When was the last time you were productive for eight hours straight? (No need to lie, we’re all friends here! We know it’s probably been a long time…)

If it makes you feel any better, just 18% of global workers surveyed by Kickresume in July said they’re productive for seven to eight hours a day. Another 39% reported being productive for five to six hours, while 29% said the same for three to four hours. Makes you wonder why the work day is still eight hours, right?

“The premise of the eight-hour workday itself is already kind of unrealistic, like people aren’t actually working for eight hours straight, non-stop, with no breaks, with no unfocused time,” said Ashley Janssen, a productivity consultant at her consulting firm.

Where did eight hours come from? After the Industrial Revolution, manual laborers often logged at least 12-hour shifts and 80-hour workweeks. But as the labor movement grew in the 1920s, the idea of the eight-hour workday was born and embraced.

But the challenge with the eight-hour workday, Janssen told HR Brew, is that it was designed for manual work and may not align with knowledge work, and the problem-solving and creativity required to do it productively.

“An organization has never really tried anything else…that’s the norm, and there’s never been any push to change it,” Janssen said. “Even though it actually doesn’t suit the kind of work that knowledge workers do.”

What can HR do? When Janssen consults on employee productivity, she said she has leaders and employees to “map out what an average week in their life looks like,” including tasks like getting dressed, cooking, commuting, running errands, and attending appointments.

“Most people are shocked, because they actually see a visual of what’s actually happening over the course of each day…and funny enough, it’s actually probably that five or six hours is where the gaps are,” Janssen said. “Their expectations that they’re going to be able to get all of these things done over the course of their ‘eight- or nine-hour day’ versus all the things they’re trying to jam in, which were actually not even possible to begin with.”

HR pros can help employees set reasonable expectations for their workday, she said, by thinking of juggling their personal and professional tasks like “juggling plastic and glass balls.”

“We’re all juggling 55 balls every day, and some of them are as simple as making lunch in the morning all the way to a big project that’s due for work, and sometimes you have to drop some balls,” she said. “What are the plastic balls? What are the ones that, if we drop them, it’s okay. They’re not going to break…versus the idea of the glass ball that if you drop that ball, something’s going to happen. It’s going to break. It’s going to hurt a relationship. It’s going to hurt a reputation.”

It all boils down to being intentional and thoughtful when prioritizing what can be achieved in a day, Janssen said.