One of the things I don't understand about modern society is the sheer number of employers who insist on forcing workers to show up in an office. I'm thoroughly unproductive in an office.
Why? Because the day usually goes like this: Show up at 9 a.m. Fight sleepy eyes by wandering down to a coffee shop and then checking email until 10 a.m. Joke around with colleagues for a bit. Sit down and do some work. After a few hours, somebody bugs me to eat lunch. Come back around 2 p.m. Work for a couple more hours, then leave. And that's on a good day. On a bad day, we have a meeting.
How much actual work does the average person get done in an 8-hour workday in the office? Three hours? Four hours? It's certainly not eight. Worse, workers have to commute to and from the office, which may waste another hour or two of their precious time.
The reality is in 2019, a lot of "office work" can be done remotely because we have this thing called the internet. Why aren't more employers using it? Remote workers are likelier to be happy workers, and happier workers are more productive. That isn't just hypothetical. Microsoft Japan just proved it.
Japan is notorious for having a workaholic culture, far worse even than the United States. It is not uncommon for people to put in 60-hour weeks. The culture is so extreme, that there are photos of business people sleeping on the street. They aren't homeless; they're just tired from working so hard.
So, Microsoft Japan decided to try an experiment: Three-day weekends, every weekend. It might be reasonable to assume that productivity would fall in proportion to the number of hours lost, so a 20% drop. But that's not what happened. Microsoft observed a 40% increase in productivity.
Note that this increase in productivity is not simply due to completing the same amount of work in less time. The workers actually did more work in less time. Not only did productivity increase, but according to NPR, meetings were cut from 60 minutes to 30 minutes, workers printed 60% fewer pages, and electricity costs fell 23%. Everybody wins.
What about those notoriously hard-working Germans? Well, they don't work that hard. Germans work about 1,356 hours per year compared to Americans' 1,780 hours. Yet, as measured by GDP per hour, the Germans are more productive.
Source: Fix America's Workaholic Culture: Make Every Weekend Three Days Long
As an Aspie, I can see the advantage of working at home. Some things have to be done in an office such as giving presentations, learning the business, going on business travel but other facets of office work can be done at home. I tend to like to work alone. I have goals and I succeed by focusing all my energy on those goals. But so much of the time is wasted in the office. So many meetings ramble on and on. So much of the training one receives is next to useless. Many of the other employees just spend their days chatting or plotting which detracts from my efficiency. There are way too many distractions.
I remember other instances where companies laid off or fired 20 percent of their workforce and the end result was a 20 percent increase in productivity. This was because the people that wasted away their days also detracted from the efficiencies of those productive individuals that were only focused on getting their work done.
27 Nov 2019, 10:57 am
