Talking about the six-day workweek: who really needs the extra hours
In recent days, business media have been discussing with mild bewilderment an initiative that might evoke nostalgia only for the darkest workshops of the 19th century. The proposal in question — put forward by certain respected entrepreneurs — is to switch to a six-day working week with a twelve-hour workday.
Let us set aside the question of how such a schedule aligns with human physiology and the occasional need to see one's family in daylight. Let us instead speak of strange arithmetic.
On choice and risks
We are reminded: company founders work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, and dedicate themselves to their companies far more than ordinary employees. And often — this is true. But what goes unmentioned is that they work for their share of the capital, for their own risk, and for their own bonus. This is their conscious choice.
The attempt to transplant the owner's motivation onto a hired employee without changing the form of compensation is reminiscent of a story in which a steam locomotive stoker is expected to work the schedule of an engineer for a stoker's wage.
Therefore, it would be logical and reasonable to propose a counter-offer — one that the authors of the initiative are unlikely to appreciate. If you consider it fair to demand sixty hours of presence per week, then share with each employee a real stake in the company proportional to those extra hours. Let everyone become a partner. And all income — shared.
No?
Well then, let us state the obvious.
One should work not 12 hours, but with one's head
Industrial psychology has long established a formula: the real productivity of hired labor, accounting for unavoidable pauses, is about six hours per day. The rest — smoke breaks, coffee, short conversations about nothing, and the noble desire to look away from the sight of a despised workplace.
If you force a person to remain at their workplace for twelve hours, they will not start working a third better. They will begin to simulate work four times more virtuosically. An entire informal culture of gaming the system will emerge. And instead of increased efficiency, you will get a universal conspiracy masked by expressions of deep concern.
Everything will be as before, only worse.
Toyota, Ford, and the human being who is not a horse
Faced with similar challenges a hundred years ago, old-school managers — unlike today's thought leaders — solved the problem elegantly.
In 1914, Henry Ford did not lengthen the workday; he shortened it to eight hours and introduced three shifts instead of two. At the same time, he doubled wages. Productivity soared, and the line of those wanting to work for Ford grew proportionally.
Toyota went further. Instead of tormenting people with time, they invented a system of lean manufacturing and universal engagement. There, the employee is not a resource but a brain. Their ideas are worth money. And this bore fruit.
But the main point is not about corporations. The main point is about human nature.
A human being is not a horse. Their value is not in the number of hours spent in a stall. Their value lies in development, involvement, and the feeling of doing something real.
Education by the internet, or why you should not confuse your office with a circus arena
There is one subtle point that is often overlooked by those who author harsh public management decisions.
It is easy to teach subordinates who grovel before their superiors. They nod, agree, and pretend that the boss's idea is the pinnacle of managerial thought. In corporate corridors, there will always be enough people ready to support any absurdity for the chance to keep their chair.
But this trick does not work with the internet.
In the internet lives the public opinion of vast masses. There is no bonus for obedience. There is no fear of losing one's position. And there, very quickly — within hours, sometimes minutes — you understand what people actually think about you and your ideas.
And that is sobering.
The internet remembers everything. Here, people do not bow. Here, they do not pretend. Here, they answer directly, loudly, and without regard for status. And this is a functioning mechanism of restraint. The very thing that prevents the powerful from making absurd decisions in the cozy silence of their offices. The thing worth fighting for — for anyone who does not wish to one day wake up in a feudal age.
The internet can educate anyone. Even the most arrogant boss, accustomed to being applauded everywhere and feared by subordinates.
Three days after the publicization of a shameful act or the announcement of another absurd initiative, on open channels and in comment sections, any person on the planet will read so much new about themselves that their vocabulary will expand with terms they had never encountered before. They will very quickly become more cautious and softer in their behavior. And perhaps, they will begin to think.
The internet is a constructive critic. You cannot fire it, and you cannot bribe it.
On a mission, that worth three pennies
And here we come to the main point.
If large businesses become unprofitable, if the feeling arises that without a twelve-hour workday and a six-day working week it is impossible to survive — the problem is not with the employees. The problem lies in the original goal.
Perhaps your goal, from the perspective of state and societal development, is worth nothing. It is simply of no interest to anyone except a narrow circle of beneficiaries. That is why people are not inspired. That is why they often take smoke breaks or drink coffee, look out the window, and simulate activity and concern.
Tools for trading cryptocurrency? Are you serious? How could that possibly motivate anyone? It is the most absurd occupation, engaging in which any normal creative person can only feel nausea.
Loans at thirty percent and the creation of a system of bondage that leads to the bankruptcy of entire families — is that a mission, in your opinion?
Perhaps increasing the sale of cigarettes and alcohol is an interesting pursuit?
Exporting ore to buy a needle? Sports betting?
The modern job market is almost always about earning money to avoid starving to death, and spending it to avoid dying of boredom. Where are the innovations? Where is the striving for new horizons? Do we no longer want to build a waste processing plant to stop polluting rivers? Is there no longer a need to think about the danger of floods and how to prevent them? Is it not interesting to find out whether it is possible to build an underwater station with a life support system for seismologists and oceanologists? Or perhaps fly to Venus once more to check whether grass has grown near the terminator?
Unprofitable, you will say. What is profitable is often boring and meaningless. And what at first glance seems crazy, on the contrary, is interesting and captivating. And your surrogate — watching an Olympic broadcast — can never compare to this.
Will it be necessary to force an interested person to stay longer to work on such projects? Or will they fall asleep thinking of waking up as soon as possible to get to their workplace, because on the way home an idea occurred to them — how to solve a problem they had been pondering for the last three days?
I agree: a huge number of people are content to watch football or monitor price fluctuations on an exchange. Perhaps the six-day week would suit them — at least they would spend their time more usefully.
But today's world of job vacancies is casino, delivery, and spectacle. And he hardly takes into account the interests of those who were not born for this, who studied and are able to identify or invent something. And where it does take them into account, it is most often accompanied by self-sacrifice and financial instability. It is sad that masses of such people around the world are forced today to spend the best years of their lives merely to speed up the delivery of yet another trinket at a discount on marketplaces, to change the color of logos on a website, or to protect yet another gambling addict from losing colorful crystals in their game account.
Instead of conclusions
The six-day week and the twelve-hour workday are an answer to a question that no one asked. And a solution to a problem that did not originate with the employees.
This is an answer to those who ask the wrong questions.
Автор статьи
