Workplaces are evolving: it’s no longer about the survival of the fittest, they’re about being fit enough to thrive … as teams and as individuals.
In this week’s blog we delve into workplace productivity around the globe, the movements seeking to shake up how we work – and the reasons your HR dept. needs to listen.
HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?
Let’s start at the top: working hours legislation, which around the world has some variability in terms of both legal working hours per week and how closely they’re enforced.
- In the UK the working time directive states employees can’t work more than 48 a week on average.
- French employment law stipulates a 35 hour work week.
- The Netherlands, the Working Hours Act states that employees can work a maximum of 60 hours a week. However, the rules for rest in between hours, days, and weeks of work are very strict and annual leave is generous…so the average is actually between 30 and 40 hours a week.
- According to the OECD, Denmark had the lowest recorded average annual working hours in 2019.
Whilst stringent rules exist in many countries to protect a sense of employees’ work/life balance – and prevent exploitation – are they tough enough?
BALLOONING BURNOUT
Despite top-down regulation, the reality on the ground is that many employees work longer hours than those directed by their respective governments. Add into the mix the fact that many organisations have global workforces, in multiple time-zones…and the old reality of a ‘9-5’ for many is a fantasy.
Whether this sense of a need to work comes from internal or external sources, and even more so since the pandemic, the blurring of lines between workplace and home life has stuck.
And the impact is impact hitting hard: on employees’ sense of wellbeing AND on workplace productivity.
Hubspot reports that 72% of Sales Directors/VPs work in their evenings and weekends. And that 1 in 3 salespeople say their sales job negatively impacts their personal life.
A recent study from New Zealand by campaign group 4 Day Week, found that the characteristics of burnout leapt from being seen in 1 in 9 workers to 1 in 3 within just 18 months between 2020-2021.
And the findings show there are two key drivers of employee burnout: working after hours via smart devices – being “highly tethered” – and juggling high work demands.
The irony is that all these long hours and ‘hard work’ do not translate into productivity! In fact, the opposite.
In the US, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American works 8.8 hours every day. Yet a study of nearly 2,000 full-time office workers revealed that most people aren’t working for most of the time they’re at work.
The true amount of productive time? Two hours and 53 minutes.
If workers are actually ‘workers’ for only around 30% of their day…something seems to be broken. And many are arguing it’s the system itself, rather than any one individual organisatrion’s workplace culture.
WORKING 9 TO WHY?
Where did our 8 hour work window come from? Actually, from a factory-worker activist over two hundred years ago: advocating change from the Industrial Revolution’s inhumane 10-12 hour manufacturing shifts.
Why 8?
8 hours is a convenient mathematical partition of our 24 hour day, that’s all. It’s as arbitrary as that.
Then, in 1914, the Ford Motor Company standardised the 8-hour working week as they lauded the uptick in production when they implemented the reduction in its factories.
Many argue that reflection and revision of these ‘normal’ practices is overdue. The European Commission predict that in the coming years 90% of jobs will require digital skills. If the typical form of labour has changed – from manual, skill-based to processing information – might the manner in which workers deliver that work also shift?
A NEW NORMAL
Before the pandemic, such things as the working week, office-based working and even the commute seemed fixed and unchangeable. But the abrupt shock and quick pivot to working from home seemed to loosen up many employers’ perception of how their workers could be productive: and hybrid working has stuck in many workplaces.
Yet things are being taken further…responding to the issues of reduced productivity, burn out and the need for revision of old models, more than 3,300 workers at 70 UK companies, ranging from a local chippy to large financial firms, started working a four-day week last month with no loss of pay in the world’s biggest trial of the new working pattern.
The pilot is being organised by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with the thinktank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.
The trial lasts six months and is based on the 100:80:100 model – 100% of pay for 80% of the time, in exchange for a commitment to maintain 100% productivity.
Already tried in both Iceland and New Zealand, the movement is gaining momentum …because it works. Founder Andrew Barnes admits that when they first began the pilots this was not guaranteed: “When we started everybody’s initial reaction was ‘how am I ever going do my work in four days rather than five’. So the fact that the trial indicates that not only could they do their work in four days, but they could do it better in four days, is something I find extraordinarily surprising.”
Independently of the trial, huge global companies like Unilever and Panasonic have already moved to the 4 day model.
It seems like the workplace and the system around it are on the brink of an evolutionary leap…how does that look in your company?
If you’re worried about reduced productivity, employee burnout and general wellbeing, there are steps you can take before a move to whole-scale restructuring of your workforce. And one of them is a meaningful workplace wellbeing program like our wrap-around service here at Latitude.
Book in a call with our friendly and compassionate team: we want to support you to ensure your team views their workplace positively.
