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  3. Do Shorter Workdays Really Make Us More Productive? When shorter workda

Do Shorter Workdays Really Make Us More Productive? When shorter workda

游客2024-01-02  8
问题     Do Shorter Workdays Really Make Us More Productive?
    When shorter workdays don’t work
    Kenny Kline of MedPreps can vouch for that. In 2012, Kline trimmed the workday of 20 full-time employees he’d hired to write practice questions for medical certification exams, keeping their salaries intact. The four-month experiment was a failure.
    Giving employees only six hours a day to devise test questions instead of the customary eight changed the company culture for the worse, said Kline, co-founder of the St Louis, Missouri-based company, which sells medical exam preparation materials in the US.
    " People definitely worked harder and we ended up getting more out of them," Kline said. "But they wouldn’t interact with each other at all. And they were a lot less happy at work. "
    Without much time for lunch or other breaks, the camaraderie his staff once enjoyed ground to a halt. What’s more, Kline said, employees were too mentally drained at the end of the day.
    "People felt a lot more burned out working six hours a day just because of the intensity," Kline said.
    Royce Leather’s Bauer can relate to the need for some people to put in more time to be more productive. At the same time that he reduced his production team’s workday, he gave his 20-person product development and design staff a pay bump and encouraged them to start working 10 hours a day instead of their customary eight. The idea was for them to create and collaborate on ideas at a more leisurely pace.
    "The time increase has definitely made the office a lot more relaxed," Bauer said. "There’s not as much stress, which definitely makes everyone a lot more productive. "
    In praise of flexibility
    For a shorter workday to succeed, companies have to treat the change in office hours as a guideline that can be adapted to meet various employee and business needs, not a rigid rule, Williams Yost said.
    For example, she said, " What about business that has to get done in time zones during the hours the workplace is closed?" And what of companies who pile 40 hours of work on employees who only have 30 paid hours in which to get the job done?
    For Jody Greenstone Miller, whose 75-person in-house staff includes people who’ve chosen to work 10, 20, 30 or 40 hours a week (for commensurate pay), knowing how long each assigned task takes is key.
    "As a manager, you have to make sure people don’t work too much," said Greenstone Miller, chief executive officer and co-founder of Business Talent Group, a consulting firm with five US offices and clients throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, North America and South America. "Because if they work too much, they end up being dissatisfied," she said.
    Debbie Carreau, chief executive officer and founder of Calgary, Alberta-based Inspired HR Ltd, agrees. To prevent "workweek creep" — and as an example to the dozens of Canadian and US companies her human resources firm serves — Carreau’s 12-person team handles the bulk of their work between 9: 00 and 15: 00. After that, the team goes home but stays on call, often fielding emergency messages one or two hours a night from clients dealing with on-the-job accidents, performance issues and resignations.
    "People are not productive after a 37-hour week," Carreau said. "More does not mean better. "
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答案     工作时间越短，效率越高?
    当减少工时也无成效时
    地中海预备学校的肯尼-克兰(Kenny Kline)可以证明这点。2012年，克兰在维持薪水不变的情况下减少了20名全职员工的工作时间，这些人是他聘请来为医学认证考试编写实践问题的。为期四个月的实验最后以失败告终。
    克兰是密苏里州圣路易斯公司的合伙创办人，他们在美国专门出售医学考试的备考资料。在他看来，给员工们六个小时而不是通常的八个小时来设计考试问题的做法使公司的文化变得更糟了。
    他说：“员工的工作确实更加勤奋了，我们的工作进度也加快了许多。但他们之间完全没有了互动。他们在工作中也少了很多乐趣。”
    如果没有充裕的午餐或休息时间，员工们曾一度享受的同事友情就会处于停顿状态。此外，克兰还表示，员工们在如此工作一天之后精神上无比疲惫。
    他说：“由于工作集中强度大，一天只有六小时的工作时间让他们苦不堪言。”
    罗伊斯皮革公司的鲍尔则考虑到一些人需要更多的工作时间，才能更富有成效。他一边减少了生产线工人的工作时间，一边给他负责产品研发和设计的20位员工加薪，并鼓励他们每天工作十小时而不是惯例的八小时。这样做是为了让他们能够以更加悠闲的节奏创作和交流想法。
    鲍尔说：“增加工作时间肯定能让办公室的氛围变得轻松不少，没有了那么多的压力，大家的工作肯定会更有效率。”提倡灵活性威廉姆斯-约斯特表示，要使缩短工作时间获得成功，公司就必须把改变办公时间作为一条能适应不同员工和业务需要的指导原则，而不仅仅是一条刻板的规定。
    比如，她说：“如果当办公场地关闭期间有些业务必须得完成，那该怎么办呢?”此外，如果公司给员工派了40个小时的工作量，却只付给30小时工作时间的薪水，那又该如何办?
    乔迪-格林斯通-米勒(Jody Greenstone Miller)手下有75个员工，他们可以选择一周工作10、20、30或者40小时(他们都会获得相对应的报酬)。在她看来，了解每项任务会花费的时间才是关键。
    格林斯通-米勒说：“作为一名经理，你必须确保员工不至工作过度。因为如果他们的工作太多，他们最终会变得不满。”格林斯通-米勒是商业人才公司的执行总裁和合伙创始人，该公司是一家咨询公司，在美国有五家办事处，客户遍布欧洲、亚洲、澳大利亚、北美和南美。
    黛比-卡罗(Debbie Carreau)是(加拿大)亚伯达省卡尔加里市一家激励人力资源公司的执行总裁和创办人，她同意米勒的说法。为了避免工作时间效率低下，作为其人力资源公司服务于十几家加拿大和美国公司的一个范例，卡罗的12人团队在9：00到15：00之间处理他们绝大部分的工作。下午三点以后，团队成员就可以回家，但是要随时待命，经常要晚上用一或两个小时来处理自客户紧急信件，解决工作上的意外事故、处理业绩问题和听令行事。
    卡罗说：“一周工作37个小时后，人就没有工作效率了。工作时间越长并不意味着做得越好。”
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