Why 4 days week works?

Submitted by admin on Tue, 11/05/2019 - 06:48
productivity

Microsoft took recent trial in Japan. Productivity jumped at 40%.  In India, it is mandatory to have 45 hours in office. Human brain is not designed to work 45 hours a week continuously. More relaxation time to consciousness means more power to it to come back and attack with new plans.

All work are mix of transactions and strategy. IN transaction work, long hours may help. As it means repetitive jobs.  In strategy, we need decisions and key decisions. Long hours hurt here. It drains. Living in fear soup / motivation soup for long hours may affect your decision making. Such companies rely on chain of mails to take an approval and decision. No one wants to own the decision.

                        Productivity = time * attention (focus)

We don’t just need time. We need attention or focus to get things done. We need quality brains who is full of innovative idea. And he should get freedom to experiment. The companies with more resources, hire more brain to work on a problem.

Just long hours and no attention means more gossip, more meetings, more day dreaming, and more control. Indian HR is handicap in hands of their masters. They are more informer than productivity drivers. They think just 45 hours limit will help in big productivity.

HR should help people to concentrate more on work. Then just distract them on event management. Create more flexible timing and more opportunities to release creative outlet. Right teams and work culture can give more. Fear may be good in transactional work ,  but it backfires in strategy works.  Many companies are struggling to get right productivity, but they don’t want to question model of their timing and their efforts to maximize the attention.  

Directing attention is hardest part. We used to have fear earlier. Now it does not work on new generation. New generation simply go away. It is hard to retain talent. This generation is very talented. They will generate the new age solutions. HR has to come up with right way to fear, hierarchy, escalations, resources, power, and productivity. Just putting 45 hours work and waiting may not work in long way.