What’s the Significance?
Until his untimely death at the age of 31, Eric Rauch was a biologist and theoretical ecologist at MIT. In his article Productivity and the Workweek, he argues that while productivity has steadily increased in developed countries since 1950, workers’ subjective sense of well-being has not seen a similar increase. In other words, the work week could be drastically shortened without painfully reducing workers’ standards of living. In fact, Rauch points out, “shorter hours were assumed to be a natural consequence of increased productivity in the US until the 1930’s, appearing in the platforms of all major parties.”
But what would we do with all that free time? According to Dan Ariely, lots of things – some directly work-related, some not, but all likely to improve the quality of our working lives. Humans are not, Ariely notes, motivated only by money on the one hand and the desire to sunbathe while sipping martinis on the other. Ironically, a shorter “official” work week would likely weaken the defensive barriers many employees erect between work and play, freeing their minds to reach “a-ha” solutions to work-related problems even while sunbathing, and to use their time at the office more efficiently and effectively.
For companies curious – yet anxious – about becoming more Google-like, a first step might be to take a hard look at your office culture. Do people seem relaxed and enthusiastic about their jobs? Do they spontaneously share ideas and collaborate informally when problems arise? Or is everybody hunched over his or her respective desk all day, radiating a “Harder-Working-Than-Thou” aura?
If b), ask yourself this: is all that hard work translating into the kind of innovation and progress your company dreams of? Chances are it isn’t. The reason, says Ariely, is that human productivity isn’t a simple “numbers game.” And any job that robots won’t be doing 50 years from now needs an employee with a sense of balance and personal freedom, not a slave mentality.
via The Four Day Work Week | Inside Employees’ Minds | Big Think.
