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Shorter Work Weeks, Less Meetings: Good or Bad?
The Economist (a magazine) recently published this short news item:
“The world’s largest-ever trial of a four-day work week was a success, with most companies involved deciding not to return to the five-day tradition. Around 2,900 workers and 61 companies in Britain, ranging from banks to fast-food restaurants, said employee turnover and stress mostly fell while productivity remained flat or rose. Many bosses made workdays more efficient by cutting back on meetings.”
The Dutch and Scandinavian have been doing this already for decades, but it has just been discovered in the UK: shorter work weeks, and also part-time work by working half-days along the week, make for higher productivity and a better atmosphere at the workplace.
The Dutch and Scandinavian were doing this because they are all Network Cultures: they all score low on Performance Orientation and lean significantly toward Quality of Life and Caring, as opposed to the UK and US, which score heavily in the direction of Performance.
The irony is that productivity actually goes up when you cut people some slack, rather than putting on the pressure all the time.
It’s amusing to see The Economist reporting that “many bosses made workdays more efficient by cutting back on meetings.” This is a culturally-loaded…
