In 2019, Microsoft tried a 4-day workweek in Japan. Productivity jumped 40%
In 2019, Microsoft tried a 4-day workweek in Japan. Productivity jumped 40%
It feels like the big elephant in the room about shorter work weeks and more remote work is that lower level employee productivity is not the issue with them (likely at all).
And it isn't even that managers and higher-ups have some biases against such schemes (which they certainly do).
It's that such schemes put a clearer focus on the actual role managers and higher-ups are supposed to be performing, namely organising employees and their tasks and priorities into coherent and well-planned projects. Managers are, on average, not actually good at this. And the problem is systemic ... the average work culture doesn't have a good sense of what this looks like. Instead, there are "glue people" all over the place, working beyond their roles to fill in the gaps and keep things together.
But, with a less "monolithic", co-located and co-active workforce, the need for actual coordination beyond "do the things! LFG!!" becomes very real, and very anxious for people who either don't know how to do that or don't want the world to find out that things were actually working fine in spite of their inability to do it. A remote and discretely scheduled workforce necessarily asks accountability questions like "who is responsible for planning this?" and "this isn't my responsibility, you need to get someone else to do it" etc.
Managers and higher-ups aren't comfortable with their actual value being scrutinised more closely. And in many ways, it's actually understandable ... as they likely don't know the answer themselves.
I think this was actually the first time someone put it this way and me reading it. I felt this way for years but never did I actually stop and think about this in such a manner. Maybe also because it is discouraged to talk about it.
I think this deserves its own post.
Thanks for the complement ... and I'm glad my hot take resonates. If you like you can paste this into your own post (and just link back here or whatever if you want to cite me).
Your own experience realising that you've felt this but not been able to talk about it could be a very interesting addition or framing and is also probably deserving of its own post!
So true!
Since I started to answer more "who planned that?", "who decided we should do this/that? instead of like "we'll try to make it work next sprint" and taking obvious flak, things are way more calm nowadays.
In my last job, productivity was through the roof when the managers were on holidays.
I wish it were that simple. There's also personality and behaviour differences in people. Some people simply suck at working alone or remotely and it fucking sucks to be their manager because guess who has to work onsite now?
Even if my current team was like my previous ones where everyone could 100% remote—hell, I saw one guy every six months or so and let another travel Europe remote working—theres's personalities that loooooooove seeing everyone at work and 0.6 of their FTE is socialising. Work is getting out of the house and away from the family. They complain that no one's at the office to get paid to talk to.
And what about the people that suck at working at the office? And those that don’t get any or are not interested in a work based social life?
Reality is that there’s diversity and lots of in betweens. Thus diversity and flexibility and the value of managers in bringing it all together (like maybe they were always supposed to?)
But what the employees do with their new found free time?
Develop independence, or even, compete with us? No no can’t have that.
Exactly, wouldn't want the slaves to get ideas.
Microsoft currently technically does unlimited time off, so there really is nothing stopping managers and PMs from cancelling meetings from every Friday and making this a reality for a global trial, but they wouldn't do that because the meetings are a big part of how they show their worth ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Or their "worth"
I wonder what excuse they used to shut it down
Considering it was in Japan they probably got off by just saying it was an experiment and the results would be evaluated (in the trash compactor). Japan is notably risk averse.
And also values the appearance of productivity over actual productivity.
See: Their silly fake running in the hallways.
"Now jobs are supposed to be miserable, so joy is canceled"
To shut down what? By design, that was a short trial:
The company introduced a program this summer in Japan called the “Work Life Choice Challenge,” which shut down its offices every Friday in August and gave all employees an extra day off each week.
And like any short trial, it doesn't answer the question whether the increased productivity would stay over longer periods of time. Other trials suggest that it wouldn't.
"It's woooooooooooke!"
They didn't really cancel it, it kept going through corona when the entire staff went remote so the conversation stopped cause everyone was kind of working on their own desired time anyway.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2ExgMVZcE
Microsoft continues to do full remote and "hybrid" (only coming into the office once or twice a week) work schedules depending on your position and responsibilities.
Edit: I also wanted to add some clarity about Japan's labor laws and how they interfere with a more "lax" labor schedule.
Japan requires employers submit the actual working schedules of employees and proof that they're working those schedules (usually either time cards) as a way to prevent overwork.
This obviously doesn't work in many cases because bosses will force their employees to work past their time clocks in or work during nomikais.
And on the other hand, this prevents teams in larger organizations from taking more hands-on approaches to their work schedules by forcing employees to work the schedules they're assigned.
What a lot of foreign companies and companies that do full remote do is exactly the same as "black companies": they fake their employees time cards so they can take a day off even when the official work schedule says they were working that day.
Japan needs some reform in their labor measuring practices before 4-day work weeks (a surprisingly popular reform, given Japan's penchant for conservatism in the workplace) can take hold properly.
They'll never agree to a 4 day work week, because then they know they'll be looking at a 3 day work week one day.
This is the war that's coming.
More and more processes are automatic, and AI is now breaking down the last holdout of "manual" jobs.
How will that future, where only a small percentage of mankind actually needs to work, look like? It could be heaven, but it's shaping up to be hell unless we win these fights.
The future where only some people need to work will literally never come. It relies on the premise that the ownership class will give up ownership. They will not.
The machines that increase the productivity and reduce the need for manual labor will just increase profit for the owner/shareholders. Increases in productivity mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for the common person. You already hear this argument now in the form of "I took the risk and put up capital to run the business so I deserve the lions share of profits." That argument will just become "I put forward the capital to buy the machines that produce the products, why do you deserve any of it!?"
The same could be said for AI. "I paid for the license to run this AGI, why should you get anything from my profit!?"
Unlikely. While a 4 day week generates more profit with happier workers, a 3 day week doesn't.
I just don't see us moving down to a 5 day work week from six. God already gave us one day off for us to find happiness in his glory I don't see what a second day would add to it. And how will the factories make money when the children aren't there to run the machines?
"Tried"
So they what saw the 40% jump and then said, Naw the old way was best?
They invented a KPI that wasn't met and called it a day.
Ah yes, and they likely told staff to do the paperwork for the new metric since it "takes zero time"
I learned from anime that those poor souls are expected to work overtime assignments for free.
4 day work week will never become the norm no matter what the studies say, if for no other reason than that the owner class will never allow the bottom rung people to start thinking that they can have what they want. especially if it's something they're asking for
Mate there was a point in time that 7 year olds worked 12h day 6 days a week, and neither women nor people without land were able to vote. Do you think things improved after conversations?
I'm prefacing this with I don't agree with the methodology that I'm about to state, as it's a very morbid one, It's just something I've noticed as I learn history.
No I don't. As seen by history conversations generally do not make change, it's not until it starts getting bloody that change starts to happen. In the case of the 5-day work week it occurred not because of peaceful protest and striking(although it did contribute) but because multiple protests ended up turning bloody which ended up getting the attention of the media which then exponentially increased peer pressure on major companies like Ford, which with the combined ideology that he had which was that if workers have more free time and have more money they can buy more model T's which will then boost his industry further, eventually caused that company to break and drop to the 5-day work week. Due to the prominence that Ford industry was, it basically forced every other company to follow suit or get left behind and then eventually 25 years later it was written into Federal law.
I firmly believe if that movement had stayed peaceful, Ford would not have caved (or had done something lesser), and we would still be working the 70 Hour Work Week, and while I do not agree that violence is the answer to making change I can't argue that it gets results.
Which is why I advocate for returning the owner class to the carbon cycle as soon as possible. The world cannot be healed while those that control it profit from its death.
Another one: https://autonomy.work/portfolio/uk4dwpilotresults/