Are You Ready For a Four-Day Workweek? A Tip From The Manager’s Answer Book

A firm in New Zealand recently tried an interesting experiment. They let their employees work for days a week while being paid for five days. The results were surprising to many—productivity went up while work/life balance increased by 24%.  Employees returned to work energized after their time off. 

According to a July 19, 2018 New York Times article, “Supervisors said staff was more creative, their attendance was better, they were on time, and they didn’t leave early or take long breaks. Their actual job performance didn’t change when doing it over four days instead of five.”

There’s a lot we could learn from this experiment, primarily employees saw a significant increase in work/life balance when they had time away from work. They said they “spent more time with their families, exercising, cooking, and working in their gardens.” The firm found this experiment so successful it plans to make it permanent.

While a four day workweek may not be what your organization can support, think about how complicated our world is these days. Today’s employees, especially Millennials, want a real balance between the time they spend at work and the time they spend doing the things they need to do to stay sane!

Manager’s Tip:  We address this issue in The Manager’s Answer Book: “How can I address my employees’ desires for work/life balance with my business requirements?”

Some of the suggestions we offer are flexible work schedules such as a compressed work week or the option of working from home a day or two a week. As long as the work gets done in a timely manner and to your requirements, cut your people some slack on when they physically need to be at your place of work.

Encourage your employees to take time off. We’ve all heard the alarming statistics about how many Americans don’t use their vacation time because they’re afraid they won’t be seen as totally committed to their work. Everyone needs breaks to refresh and rest. Let your people know you want them to take time off and model what you want them to do—take your vacation time and use weekends to disconnect yourself. You’ll be amazed at how creative you are when you are away from work pressures.

Going back to the New Zealand experiment above, don’t you want your employees to be more productive and more energized?  If you can accomplish that in less time so your people have better work/life balance, all the better!

For more tips on work/life balance, see page 106 of The Manager’s Answer Book available on Amazon at: https://tinyurl.com/y8e4ohe2

Want to Increase Productivity? Collaborate!

What a great time to be writing about collaboration, I thought as I watched the Winter Olympics!  I saw so many examples of successful collaborations. While there are lots of individual events in the Olympics, it appears the organizers are attempting to build in more and more team events—like the team ice dancing event and team skiing events.

One of the best examples of collaboration has to be team sports like hockey.  Even though the women’s gold medal hockey match was on TV in the middle of the night, I was glued to the action and riveted to the outcome when the U.S. women won gold.  Watching their unselfish play, it was clear they knew that to win, they each had to play their role and do it flawlessly.

Collaboration is essential to business success in our highly competitive business environment, and yes, maybe even to our survival as we are in a global economy. Most of us have learned that silos are deadly, and hoarding knowledge kills collaboration and stifles innovation.

Collaboration at work means having a clear understanding of the goal to be achieved and what role each person plays to achieve the goal. The end result of collaboration and teamwork is often the same—when people collaborate, they’re working together toward a stated goal!

However, one of the things that either makes collaboration effective is when work groups respect what each person brings to the team, and people put their own ambitions and need for personal satisfaction aside order to achieve the team goal.  This isn’t easy for many people in our business world today, but it can make your organization much more productive.

Here are some actions leaders and managers can take to encourage collaboration:

• Set clear objectives for success
• Identify potential obstacles to success and remove as many as possible
• Get to know your team and have them get to know each other
• Take responsibility for mistakes
• Recognize and respect everyone’s contributions
• Encourage open discussion of goals and objectives
• Brainstorm solutions and encourage creativity
• Build consensus on group projects
• Listen to input from everyone
• Compromise when necessary to move forward
• Celebrate successes and learn from mistakes

Collaboration can have a positive impact on productivity and innovation, so encourage it whenever possible. For more information on how to maximize collaboration at work, watch for our latest book, The Manager’s Answer Book, which is available now on Amazon for pre-order and will be released in June, 2018.

A Day in the Life

At a Writers' Digest Conference Barbara and I attended, a writer (translate: someone who receives royalty checks on a regular, steady basis from writing) was asked what his day was like.  It went something like this: breakfast, take the kids to school, back to the home office to write for the morning, lunch, gym in the afternoon (a by-product of that, it increases endorphins) then into the office for a while.  Another writer talked about watching movies on TV.  She has to convince her husband she's working when she does it—she’s studying characters!  When she's blocked, she does laundry.  It clears her mind, gives her a chance to reboot, and makes her feel that she is being productive. 

Not too many years ago, managers in organizations would have been shocked, outraged to learn that their workers who telecommute didn’t spend their days “chained” to their computers and “working” just as industrial workers were tied to the factory for the workday. Doing laundry, exercising, watching TV (it can be a distraction when you work alone) were considered shameful, disgraceful and outrageous. 

Anyone who's ever worked in a traditional office environment can attest to how much time workers are capable of wasting.  Gossip around the water cooler or break room, folks dropping by to chat, smoke breaks, coffee breaks, and oh yes, surfing the Internet in the office.  Having experienced both corporate life and independent consultant's life, I can attest that I'm much more productive working from a home office.

Beyond productivity, the way we work today is more fluid. Work and productivity no longer need to take place in a fixed place or at a fixed time. When we were an agrarian society, the lines around home and work were nonexistent. People worked and lived on their farms, and there were no schedules. Nature often dictated when tasks were done. During the Industrial Revolution, workers moved from the farm to the factory. Laws and rules evolved to regulate work and work schedules. Now the Information Age is once again transforming the way we work as workers are moving from the office back home, and the lines between work and home are getting blurred. We’ve come full circle.

As technology has made it easier to work remotely, workplace flexibility is becoming a reality for organizations. In today’s competitive environment, flexibility and a culture that encourages balance between personal and business obligations is an advantage in attracting and retaining the best employees. Smart organizations recognize that allowing their employees flexibility when possible increases their loyalty to the company and is a good retention strategy. Technology also has provided tools to determine if work – meaning results – is occurring. Managers should be taking advantage of these tools. 

Workers have lives and during their daily 8 to 5 routines, they need to have the time to take care of their business and not be "chained" to their desks or workstations. That’s why we devoted an entire chapter in The Big Book of HR to Workplace Flexibility and examined the latest trends.