Myths of Work

The Stereotypes and Assumptions Holding Your Organization Back

Ian MacRae, Adrian Furnham

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780749481292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion des ressources humaines

Buying a table tennis table will make your staff happier. Working eight hours a day, five days a week, will result in the most productivity. Paying higher salaries will always result in higher motivation. But will it really?There are a staggering number of myths, stereotypes and out-of-date rules that abound in the workplace. This can make it feel impossible to truly know how to get the most out of your career, your team and your organization. In Myths of Work, Ian MacRae and Adrian Furnham take an entertaining and evidence-based look at the most pervasive myths about our working lives, from the serious to the ridiculous, to give you the insight you need to become a better manager in the modern workplace. Fascinating real life case studies from organizations around the world display the myths (and how to overcome them) in practice. Myths of Work takes the most up-to-date academic research in business and psychology and combines it with practical insights, a lively writing style and a handy dip-in-and-out structure to form your ultimate guide to becoming a better enlightened manager.

Flexible working is here to stay for the foreseeable future – it is defined as the variation in working patterns where an individual can choose when their working day starts and ends and whether to work from home, the office or elsewhere.

Introduction

We’ve all learned how to go on Sunday night to e-mail and work from home. But very few of us have learned how to go to the movies on Monday afternoon. (Ricardo Semler, 2014)

Some people love their jobs. Some people watch the clock. The latter are perhaps more synonymous with those who describe their job as a simple ‘nine to five’. The phrase nine to five is not a mere description of the number of hours an employee works but has taken on a greater cultural meaning. Having a nine-to-five job doesn’t necessarily refer to someone who works from 9 am to 5 pm but symbolizes a person who has a full-time job that operates during standard business hours, Monday through Friday.

This traditional eight-hour shift was originated by Robert Owen in 1817, a social reformer who observed the long, gruelling 16-hour shifts that workers endured during the Industrial Revolution. He campaigned for the 40-hour week movement using the undisputable (at the time) logic that a balance in life is important. He proclaimed: ‘Eight hours labour. Eight hours recreation. Eight hours rest.’ Thus a 24-hour day should be split evenly between work, leisure and sleep.

It wasn’t long before companies embraced the eight-hour day after seeing an increase in employees’ productivity. The car company, Ford, was one of the first to take on the 40-hour week, with its competitors still remaining sceptical. However, after seeing the increase in Ford’s profit margin (from US $30 million to US $60 million in two years) most followed suit. But is working eight hours a day, every day, Monday through Friday, really the most conducive to a productive environment, or are there other, more efficient ways of working?

The problems with an eight-hour work day

Profound technological changes have meant that the nature of work has drastically changed over a rapid amount of time. The internet, tablets and smartphones now make it possible for employees to work from anywhere at any time. No longer restricted to their cubicles or offices, workers have the ability to work remotely. It also means that those who work in an office can take their work home with them.

In the UK alone there is a rapidly rising number of employees who access their work e-mails at home: 81 per cent of office workers check their e-mail outside working hours, with a third of employees even checking their e-mails before they get out of bed in the morning (Guibourg, 2015). So realistically, a nine-to-five doesn’t really exist as it’s difficult to know how much extra time employees are working.

Time has become a way to measure productivity because it is perhaps the easiest way of doing so. However, in today’s creative and mobile economy it is important to look towards other means of measurement. An eight-hour work day is not directly correlated to eight hours of productivity. An employee can sit at an office desk for eight hours but achieve very little, often being distracted by constant interruptions – a survey of 750 employees in 2014 reported that 31 per cent waste 30 minutes daily while 6 per cent waste over two hours daily at work (Conner, 2015). Employees are also diverse individuals; not everybody is productive at the same times. While some are early risers and work their best in the mornings, others are more inclined to work better during the night.

Is it working the number of hours a day that’s the problem, or the rigidity of the workday? In 2000, France reduced its working hours from 39 to 35 hours a week, making it one of the shortest working weeks in the world. As an effort to increase job opportunities and work–life balance, Estevão and Sá (2008) examined the effectiveness of this policy change. They reported that France’s law did not create more jobs and promoted behavioural changes that suggested that many workers were less happy with their working hours. Moreover, very few of France’s white-collar workers actually work only 35 hours a week. Their suggestions for policy change are that the 35-hour workweek should be stopped and employees and firms should be free to choose the length of the workweek.

The future of working

Flexible working (also known as flexitime) is here to stay for the foreseeable future – it is defined as the variation in working patterns where an individual can choose when their working day starts and ends and whether to work from home, the office or elsewhere. There are great benefits to this way of working (Origo and Pagani, 2008). The measurable productivity benefits are real: Lloyds Banking Group reported that ‘66 per cent of line managers and colleagues considered that flexibility improved efficiency and productivity’. Greater flexibility also means an improved ability to meet clients and customer demands on a 24/7 schedule. Notably, employees who have more flexibility are more likely to be engaged and firms will have reduced turnover (Future of Work, 2012).

Millennials have already started throwing out the idea of a typical eighthour workday. The Millennial Branding survey reported that 45 per cent of Millennials will choose workplace flexibility over pay (Schawbel, 2013). As more importance is placed on flexibility of working hours, freelancing has also become the new way of working. Forbes says that 34 per cent of the US workforce is now considered freelance, and this is set to rise to 40 per cent by 2020 (Taylor, 2013). The common reason behind this change in the nature of work is primarily the technological advancements that have occurred.

Generation 2020, who have grown up with these technologies, will start clocking on to these changes and embracing them themselves. At this very minute, these individuals are attending university and will soon enter the workforce, changing the way we work as we know it. They are well digitally connected, culturally liberal, extremely mobile and unwilling to settle for anything less. Not unlike some other groups of individuals…

There are some individuals who take flexible working to the next level; they are known as ‘digital nomads’. Pieter Levels (2015) predicts that by 2035 there will be a billion digital nomads in the world. They take advantage of technological advancements and work remotely from wherever they want, more than likely running their businesses from a tropical island in the Caribbean. For example, Hubud is a co-working space that has opened in Bali, Indonesia and they believe they are the future of the workplace. Their tagline, ‘co-working, co-living, co-learning and co-giving’ has brought together a large group of fiercely independent individuals who are seeking to change the way they work.

Conclusion

Although a digital nomad’s way of working may be extreme, and only suited to certain industries, organizations must look up from their traditional ways and learn to incorporate more flexible working hours, or risk losing out on recruiting new top talent (Kelliher and Anderson, 2008). The first step is to look at their organizational culture and their employee demands and needs and try and ensure they meet them.

References

Conner, C (2015) Wasting time at work: the epidemic continues, Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2015/07/31/wasting-time-at-work-the-epidemic-continues/#1d9424901d94

Estevão, M and Sá, F (2008) The 35-hour workweek in France: straightjacket or welfare improvement? Economic Policy, 23 (55), pp 417–63

Future of Work (2012) The benefits of flexible working arrangements: a Future of Work Report. Available at: http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/cwf/individuals/pdf/benefitsCEOFlex.pdf

Guibourg, C (2015) Email addicts? One in three UK office workers check their work email in bed, City AM. Available at: http://www.cityam.com/223107/email-addicts-one-three-uk-office-workers-check-their-work-email-bed

Kelliher, C and Anderson, D (2008) For better or for worse? An analysis of how flexible working practices influence employees’ perceptions of job quality, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19 (3), pp 419–31

Levels, P (2015) The future of digital nomads: how remote work will transform the world in the next 20 years. Available at: https://levels.io/future-of-digital-nomads

Origo, F and Pagani, L (2008) Workplace flexibility and job satisfaction: some evidence from Europe, International Journal of Manpower, 29 (6), pp 539–66

Semler, R (2014) How to run a company with (almost) no rules, TED. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_company_with_almost_no_rules/transcript?language=en

Schawbel, D (2013) Millennial Branding and Beyond.com survey reveals the rising cost of hiring workers from the Millennial generation, Millennial Branding. Available at: http://millennialbranding.com/category/blog/page/4/

Taylor, K (2013) Why Millennials are ending the 9 to 5, Forbes, 23 August. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetaylor/2013/08/23/why-millennials-are-ending-the-9-to-5/#7db55841715d

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