Stop Working All Those Hours
blogs.hbr.org
blogs.hbr.org
I think part of the problem, at least in the States, is that we have this ideal of hard work and determination paying off, and lionizing work ethic above talent, skill, education, intelligence, etc. While it's certainly true that work ethic can overcome lack of any of the above, the idea that work == success is just as fallacious as the idea that, say, education == success. A little cleverness, plus a little laziness, can make often make the same amount of labor go a lot further, so judging just effort is missing a big part of the picture.
In many ways, the US economy never grew out of the slave labor mentality.
This is a matter of not wasting other people's time, it is a matter of respect. If you prioritize and plan accordingly, being prompt is usually quite easy. If you haven't done so, then you are effectively saying that your laziness is more important than your compatriot's time. Of course, this is only important when one of the parties has this view (it is some sort of prisoner's dilema, I think.)
The measure of a good knowledge worker though is not being on time, rather it is productivity month over month.
I have seen numerous cases where the person implementing the code is rewarded and next one comes along, and rewrites the code since first one is too hard to change. He gets rewarded too and cycle continues.
The trick instead is for those at the top to inculcate a culture where those below are working for good final results directly rather than working to either create an appearance or to satisfy some metric.
If you someone is result-focused, you can relax about the hours they're working.
Is it done? No bugs? Great. Client is happy.
One trick: in weekly 1:1 meetings most employees will start by just discussing their current issues. Instead, start by talking about what you accomplished last week and its value, then move on to what's next. This is still a natural conversation (discussing the past, then future), but it makes your value and results much more visible.
It's cognitively easier for the boss to lean on what is easy (observed time in office). Unfortunate, and like all cognitive biases, we need to teach them, so people can work around them.
There is a big danger to the super cushy corporations: they make work almost as pleasant (for a certain set of vanilla employees) as being at home / out and about. This enables those vanilla employees to happily spend way more than 40 hours in office. Obviously the management must think this is good... but is it?
I suspect the vanilla individuals spending all that time in the office are benefiting from the cognitive bias and are being promoted at the expense of the individuals who have lives. This puts a good chunk of employees who are just as likely to be real contributors into a disadvantaged position.
One could also argue that vanilla employees are less likely to be good contributors, especially if their lack of a life correlates with a lack of interest in new things / etc. This is more of a stretch tho.
On the other hand I will readily admit that maintaining a healthy work/life balance is key, and knowing not to push one's self to the breaking point is an important bit of self awareness.
Now for management, well, they need to judge by both results short and long term. Employees working extra long weeks to complete this sprint? Sure the sprint gets done, but if after 2 or 3 sprints half your team leaves, well, the product schedule is going to suffer. :)
It's important to not build up a sleep deficit though, as that can lead to health problems, burnout, eventually depression, etc. But as long as you are enjoying work and getting enough sleep at night, I say go for it.
So why this still done like that? Because it easier to answer the question: "How many hours have you been working this week?" than "What value have you brought to the company this week?"
We substitute an easy question to a harder one and we feel we answered the hard one.
Edit: Fixed grammar/typos
Of course these people work long hours -- they have an incentive to do so, as they wisely learn that they must at least put up the facade of working long hours, else they will be passed up for promotion and eventual partnership.
If you get a whole week's worth of tasks done in 20 minutes you're done for the rest of the week. Obviously we did a bad job of estimating (a silly case of course) but - you're done. You don't get more work shoved on your stack. Sit on the beach if you want.
Sure, you can work more, but you're not expected to.
Are you sure about this? I tend to believe you really mean this, but it's hard to believe that you, or other managers are not looking at someone doing 20 minutes of work a week as a weasel that hacked a system.
* Employees are adults who deserve to be treated with honesty, integrity, and respect. In a word: Trust. If they violate that trust, they're out.
I suspect if we indeed estimated a week's worth of work that ended up being literally a NO-OP, the kind of person I'd work with would realize this and re-assess the situation.
In the least, part of our process (and a "result" that people are tracked against) is "continuous improvement" and part of that would be recognizing we messed up somewhere to have that situation occur. Hiding this wouldn't be meeting that result.
It's an extreme example, agreed, but it illustrates a key point: if "management" can hold you accountable for not meeting your goals then they have to be comfortable when you do meet them. Part of the explicit agreement of ROWE is that this is a fair and equitable relationship. Having management assign you more work because you got it done "faster" goes against that agreement.
We track and iterate professional growth weekly. Thus, the expected results are set and evaluated on a week-by-week basis. People tend to find their unique rhythm within a few weeks and reach steady state.
I would go even a step further, if all work is result driven, why having work hours anyways? Why not just agree on what has to be done in some future time period, and forget about hours completely?
That way, employees will feel more relaxed, and accomplish more.
I'm sure I can do more in 20 "high hours" than in 40 "forced hours", but if you don't let me work only 20 "high hours" a week, and assign me 20 more "forced hours", it would inevitable lead back to 40 "forced hours" with much more work and less done.
That's why I never bid based on hourly rate, but based on some agreed amount of work, when doing contracts.
With our implementation of ROWE, there's no such thing as an "annual performance review" because you essentially get one every week. We have periodic salary review (quarterly) to see if you need adjusted (salary is based on a semi-objective tech ladder we've devised) but otherwise there's no "Let's meet every 12 months so I can check off 'meets expectations' and give you your cost-of-living adjustment"
When I read that, my first thought is overbilling, not overworking.
More hours == more money.
While their value to the customer may be lower, their value to the firm is likely right on target.
If long hours are mandatory, people will just tend to do the same, if not lower, amount of work in those 12 hours than what they would otherwise do in 8 hours.
And why would they care about quality if that's not rewarded? They could always say: "But I worked for 12 hours a day.".
If you think the crisis is temporary and a one-off, it might be worth it to log long hours for a month or two for the credibility that comes from having suffered with the group, especially as the company/group grows and becomes cliquish and the before/after crowd distinction starts to matter. If it's permanent, it's usually better to find a new job.
I understand your point, but I'm going to have to disagree with you here. In a company run that irrationally, if you think the crisis is temporary and a one-off, let's be honest, the probability of this really being the case is smaller than the probability that you have talked yourself into believing what you so badly want to believe.