The Changing Workplace
Take a good look at your workplace. Remember what you see. It will never look like this again.
To say there will be changes is to make an embarrassing understatement; we’ve begun what could be and should be the most fundamental set of changes in the history of our workplace: structural, organizational, operational, and societal changes.
If we humans are the smart species we think we are – capable not just of learning by doing but learning through inductive thinking and dialog – then we’ll learn big lessons from the tribulations we’ve endured (with which we’re not done). And those lessons are not which remote communications platform is better than another or what’s the optimal size of a virtual team. Those are the little ones.
Here are the big ones – which are not, by themselves, spelled out for us. They’re there for us to figure out.
Kiss the five-day work week goodbye.
Our hominid ancestors took about two days to hunt down a wooly mammoth or saber-toothed tiger. Then, for the next five days, they’d eat. Not a bad gig: work for two days and relax for five. We’re doing just the opposite. And we call this progress?
But why five days? A little more than a century ago, a New England mill decided to close on Saturdays, giving Jewish workers the chance to observe their Sabbath, just like their Christian coworkers on Sundays. Then in 1926, Henry Ford decided that workers were more productive if they had two days off and worked no more than eight hour per day. In the process, he reduced hours while maintaining workers’ pay. Further, in 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, limiting the workweek to 44 hours, and in 1940, amended that to 40 hours.
All well and good – until now. The five-day week doesn’t fit the 21st century anymore. That’s why there’s movement in countries around the globe towards a four-day week, including two days in the office and two remotely. It may not work for every job, but this is a major game changer.
Besides, how much do you like your three-day weekends? How about 52 of them each year?
Pay for results, not time.
Like Henry Ford, let’s recognize when workers are productive and when they’re not. While migrating to a four-day week, we needn’t insist on increasing hours per day to retrieve that obsessive 40-hour albatross. When we establish desired results instead of required time, we get a R.O.W.E.: a results only work environment. After all, what’s the objective here, time or results?
Eliminate hourly wages wherever possible.
This should be easy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 80 million Americans – half the workforce – are hourly workers. Although that suits some, hourly workers enjoy fewer benefits, like paid time off to care for children, paid vacations, and other perks. An equitable workplace is a better one. We should set to the task of designing – wherever possible – an equitable, salary-based workplace.
Beyond work-life balance
With all the emphasis on work-life balance, we are missing a bigger point and wasting emotional capital on a smaller one. Balance is merely an equation. In order to maintain that balance – where one side of the equation equals the other – we must remain static. But we can’t, so as soon as we reach that balance, it goes away. If, however, we strive for work-life compatibility, all those things that change the equation every day are placed into context and we compensate well. The core issue, then, is how much your work means to you, not whether we lead formulaic lives.
Technology: an operational, not strategic, advantage.
At the onset of a groundbreaking technology – like the internet, mRNA vaccines, or stone tools for that matter – a technology could offer a strategic edge. But when the innovators and early adopters have had their day, that technology becomes wide-spread and then influences not what we do, but how we do it. We should not conflate strategy and operation. We obsess over how much technology we have – a mistake. Like in all facets of life, excess obfuscates purpose.
“Build quality into the process.”
That advice came from W. Edwards Deming, no less, and though that was in the industrial post-war period, it’s just as relevant today, if not more so. Organizational design people get high marks for winging it so well during this crisis. Now let’s see how well we all do in understanding how the nature of most jobs will change. Job descriptions, qualifications, and requirements are one set of concerns, but how these jobs are designed – and how they’re designed to fit together is what will define quality. The quality products or services will follow.
What a difference a crisis makes!
So take a good look at your workplace.
