Work hard, play hard: Micrsoft reports 40% increased productivity after decreased workding days

[GoldenLag]

5 minutes ago, Deli said:

My experience tells me the big bosses are usually shortsighted. Employee are expendable like toilet paper.

at least on a large scale. on a smaller scale it can be different. 

[GoldenLag]

3 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

sure, you wanna invest in my startup? 

sorry, but im gonna work on my 4 step plan instead

 

1. start a company with # day work week
2. ??????
3. profit
4. (# - 1)
5. repeat

[tankyx]

Not surprising in itself, just surprised a company in Japan is doing this.

 

In France, a lot of people are working at 80% (4 days in office or 3 days in office + 1 remote), mainly because the bump in salary

is not worth the hassle. People are usually not productive on the last day of work of the week. it is wasted ressources.

 

In 20-30 years this will become the standard.

[Deli]

17 minutes ago, tankyx said:

Not surprising in itself, just surprised a company in Japan is doing this.

 

In France, a lot of people are working at 80% (4 days in office or 3 days in office + 1 remote), mainly because the bump in salary

is not worth the hassle. People are usually not productive on the last day of work of the week. it is wasted ressources.

 

In 20-30 years this will become the standard.

In 20-30 years, many jobs will be replaced by AI. Not sure there will be enough jobs for human to work 5 days a week. LOL

[tankyx]

6 minutes ago, Deli said:

In 20-30 years, many jobs will be replaced by AI. Not sure there will be enough jobs for human to work 5 days a week. LOL

Well yes, but no. Before we actually used the A.I, it was pretty common to think we would get replace by A.I in 90% or so of the current jobs.

 

But now that we use it, we understand that A.I, while perfect for automation, can't be used without human monitoring.

We will adapt to the new working methods, and the A.I will be another tool we can use, instead of being our replacement.

[Shirley Dulcey]

There are undoubtedly a few things going on. But the result suggests that going to a shorter work week may make sense for certain classes of workers.

 

First, this study was probably limited to people that we refer to as knowledge workers. They sit at a desk or stand at a work bench and think about stuff and make it work. It may also be talking about direct sales employees. It is probably not talking about general office work; here in the US at least, Microsoft outsources all of that, the secretaries and the like don't actually work for Microsoft. (That started back in the 90s so they wouldn't have to give those people stock options or first class benefits.) It is not talking about customer support, where you have to be available at fixed hours to speak to customers. It is not talking about retail workers such as employees of the Microsoft Store. It is not talking about manufacturing, a business that Microsoft is not in. (All Microsoft hardware products are made for them by contract manufacturing companies.) It is not talking about order fulfillment; that is also outsourced. (That would be things like taking orders for boxes or pallets full of Windows or Office packages and shipping them to stores.) I suspect that going to fewer workdays would not generate the same amount of improvement in most of those lines of work, though it would probably improve employee morale.

 

Second, some of the improvement was surely caused by the Hawthorne Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect  That is a well known phenomenon where making people part of a research study causes a temporary improvement in performance.

 

For jobs that require customer contact, moving to a four day workweek will make the scheduling problem more challenging. The company will no longer have a core of employees who all cover the weekdays; instead they will have a more fluidly scheduled group who won't all have the same weekday off, as well as some whose four day schedule will include one or both weekend days. Scheduling is something that computers are good at, so it should not be an impossible problem to solve.

[Unixsystem]

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

So an extra day off, means A LOT to them. It can really boost moral.

But would that model work everywhere? That is the problem.

I was thinking something similar. Japan has a culture that is notoriously rooted in "work, work, work". 

 

If you give them more time off, does that just mean that they are deliberately working themselves even harder on the other days to still meet their quotas? That's not inherently a bad thing if they still get the day off, but if you apply that to other countries that often put less of an intense value on work, does that increase in effort actually carry over? 

[Xiee]

We actually did this with one of the companies I used to work before.

You get 3 days off. But during your work days, instead of working 8 hours a day, we worked 10-12 hours.

[rawrdaysgoby]

Only Salaried empolyees I guess

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Strange way of measuring productivity...

 

Many things affect sales. Promotion? New product launch? Change in marketing and pricing strategy? Seasonal?

 

'Sales' also didn't specify sales quantity or revenue. What about sales distribution? Could one employee have gotten lucky in the month and secured a big contract?

 

This reeks of being a PR move

 

MS (no company actually) has anything to gain from promoting something that would reduce productivity and profit.  Either it did raise productivity and this is good for everyone or the cost savings on no one working that day offset productivity loss so much that any reason they dig up to promote it is good enough or even that it just saved them enough that it's still worth pursuing.

 

PR rarely trumps major cost reduction programs in terms of profit. 

 

 

[spartaman64]

i remember hearing a story of when american astronauts were on skylab they were overworked and fell days behind schedule and then for one day they cut all communication to earth and just relaxed and then they caught back up and finished everything

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab_controversy

[MichaelWd]

"Over that period, the firm saw productivity, as measured by sales per employee"

 

I wonder if this scales similarly for other types of work. Eg coding. I am pretty sure it wouldn't. Sales is mainly interpersonal and I can see how lower stress would help improve sales. 

[desertcomputer]

On 11/4/2019 at 8:33 PM, GoldenLag said:

i assume there is a raise per hour of work, but overall probably a slight decrease in wages. 

 

otherwise it wouldnt make sence, even if there was an increase in productivity per hour

Or rise the work time per day. I mean if you already working from 9-5 a extra 1-2 hours per day isn't that much difference.

[GoldenLag]

6 minutes ago, desertcomputer said:

Or rise the work time per day. I mean if you already working from 9-5 a extra 1-2 hours per day isn't that much difference.

Wouldnt be a bad solution really. But id increase the workday an hour at most. 

 

Dont think adding another 2 hours would have a good effect in the workers. 

[Fnige]

On 11/4/2019 at 9:35 PM, Trik'Stari said:

I'd be fine with this so long as my pay was increased to offset the lost hours.

 

I can't see this catching on in the states. At least not with businesses that are open 7 days a week.

2 teams on 4 day shifts each takes half a week and both are there for the busiest day

 

just an idea

[Trik'Stari]

2 hours ago, SlimyPython said:

2 teams on 4 day shifts each takes half a week and both are there for the busiest day

 

just an idea

"But what's the benefit to us?" - Worthless management that doesn't actually do any real work.

[Teddy07]

I worked fulltime in the past and I think I prefer to stay it this way. I might be happy with a 4 day week for a few month but I think I prefer the extra money. The cost of living is increasing and I also do want to travel.

[maartendc]

This is definitely in line with what research has shown to be true. An experiment in Denmark (I believe) had people working 5 hour days instead of 8 hour days, and found they could at least maintain, if not improve, the same productivity.

 

Also, European countries where people work long hours (Greece for example) have way lower productivity numbers than some countries where people work shorter days.

 

I see this myself in my own workplace. If you have 8 hours to complete a task, it will take you 8 hours. But if you only have 6 hours, you will actually complete it in 6 hours. If you know that your workweek is only 4 days long, you will somehow find that you can complete your work in 4 days instead of 5. (Unless you are overburdened by poor planning already).

 

On top of that, being more well rested from a 3 day weekend will have you working more productively and efficiently. On the opposite end, if you are working 10 hour days or through the weekend, you will likely get less sleep, less down time, and be more tired and less productive because of it.

 

Hopefully big companies like Microsoft will promote this practice so it can trickle down to all parts of the economy.

 

[TigerHawk]

I am curious about this productivity report.... How was this measured? On a per day basis? I am wondering if they made any changes to the deliverables required to be finished by the end of the week when cutting a day out. It would make sense if you lost an entire work day but still had to complete the same amount of work of five days but in four days now that your productivity would have to go through the roof to meet deadlines. 

 

As if that shit isn't already rough in Japanese work lifestyle. 

[Rolling2405]

On 11/4/2019 at 12:40 AM, williamcll said:

Microsoft Japan tested a four-day workweek

If they keep it permanently they will have to bring it the the US or they will face a big backlash from employees here in the US. 

[Taf the Ghost]

9 minutes ago, Thomas001 said:

If they keep it permanently they will have to bring it the the US or they will face a big backlash from employees here in the US. 

The headline hides what MS really did was use the 3-day weekends as a means to enforce better management practices on their local Japanese management.  Where the actual productivity increases came from was killing the ability to drag meetings out for hours.

 

Most places are poorly managed because the actual skillset for management takes development. If you're good at it, you'll easily be able to move to a much better paying position quickly. 

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The headline hides what MS really did was use the 3-day weekends as a means to enforce better management practices on their local Japanese management.  Where the actual productivity increases came from was killing the ability to drag meetings out for hours.

 

Most places are poorly managed because the actual skillset for management takes development. If you're good at it, you'll easily be able to move to a much better paying position quickly. 

It's a reasonable thought, but to risk losing a fulls day labor on your entire workforce is a little reckless for something so simple to implement.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

It's a reasonable thought, but to risk losing a fulls day labor on your entire workforce is a little reckless for something so simple to implement.

I see you've not dealt with Japanese business culture much. Heh

 

The 3-day weekend was also pretty clever. Because of the compressed workweek, they had to adapt to the new standards while also keeping people out of the office during August in Tokyo. I think that's where having two 3-day weekends per month would make a lot of sense for office work environments. Those hot weather months have a lot higher energy costs, especially in Japan.

[Gegger]

i'll wait for schools to do this, by friday i just want to do other stuff, none of my classmates are glad to be at school. we also just work really slowly on fridays

[mr moose]

32 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I see you've not dealt with Japanese business culture much. Heh

 

The 3-day weekend was also pretty clever. Because of the compressed workweek, they had to adapt to the new standards while also keeping people out of the office during August in Tokyo. I think that's where having two 3-day weekends per month would make a lot of sense for office work environments. Those hot weather months have a lot higher energy costs, especially in Japan.

Actually I know a few Japanese and have worked with them before.   

 

Lets assume you are right and it is a management issue and not a overloaded worker issue.  By taking one day a week of production from the entire labor force in order to address a management issue is somewhat disproportionate.  Especially in a country that prides itself of the companies success.