Work more — get less?

Working more and more under the pressure of modern managers optimizers, we often get the fact that employees give even less result when working 12 hours. There is a vicious circle: take a job, drive like a squirrel, fire, and wait for the next. Time does not teach, and today I only hear from many managers — employees are fully loaded, can not cope, should catch up overtime and on weekends.

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The legal "privilege" of an eight-hour working day in Russia, extracted by the blood of generations of the industrial revolution of the past, in the conditions of the activities of most of the business and state organizations quietly came to naught. The question arises whether it is possible to focus on the norm adopted a hundred years ago?

After all, if you think a little bit, it has nothing to do with modern realities, and it does not harm not only business, but also does not give value to employees. The notion that the workday starts at the office in the morning and ends with leaving him badly out of date in a society permeated by digital technologies.

The slogan of the capitalist and reformer Owen "8 hours of work, 8 hours of entertainment and 8 hours of rest" has not been confirmed in practice, and the working day actually only continues to grow. Before the transition to combining with "remote work", I rarely had a day to solve problems in less than 10-12 hours in the office. Well, adding time spent in the subway or evening traffic jams, you can come to the sad conclusion of "life for work", and not Vice versa.

On the part of employees, such reasoning often looks a bit exploitative, but what to do with the urgent problem of planning and load balancing, when the majority can, but does not want to, honestly perform the tasks assigned. Over the past 10 years, in managerial positions, I only see a permanent carousel of "working procrastination" and variations of the "Italian strike", which means the need to work out. Is it the fault solely by the employer?

The legislative initiatives of the Russian deputies are striking: the desire to introduce an unpaid two-hour lunch break, reduce the working week to 35 hours for non-smokers, break for 3 breaks of 20 minutes, and sometimes seriously discuss the idea of a "four-day". I want to ask, we do believe that efficiency will not diminish even more (volume no one could save)?

The standard of living of the vast majority of Russians is incomparable to those countries where they have already switched to a 6-hour working day. It is hard to imagine that people will spend their free time in lack of finances to communicate with their families (and not for a second job). Even among the Swedes, the practice of reducing working hours has led to an increase in business costs, morbidity of employees, difficulties in providing social support from the state, the need to hire additional staff...

If there is any benefit to such a dream, it is to increase the number of jobs (unemployment problems). Although in this case, the duties will rather be evenly " smeared "between the existing staff, and the savings of the Fund will not benefit the" health " of employees.

All of us know, today many for preservation of a workplace work and more than 12 hours (and turn of wishing is available). The press still put in the example of Henry Ford, who was one of the first to transfer employees to an 8-hour cycle and increased profits by almost 2 times. But for some reason they keep silent about the fact that he at the same time dismissed more than a third of employees who are unable to cope with the growing pace. To pay the same money for a 6 hour working day no one will!

Yes, an 8 - hour day is out of date and I think a lot more benefit from flexible schedules and remote work formats when employees are free to choose the number of breaks and paid time by the employer. However, this is confirmed by various studies indicating the effectiveness of short periods of rest (as over long periods of work, productivity decreases).

But are the employees themselves ready to give timely results in complete freedom of flexible schedule? My observations show that only one in four is self-contained and does not require control (no matter when they come and go or rest, there is a result). However, the majority is not ready for this, so neither the change of working hours, nor the number and frequency of rest in the coming years will not change their professional attitude to efficiency.

The so-called 4th industrial revolution that is Taking place today will lead to extensive automation: the transition of everything that can be on robotic lines, "unmanned" transportation and much more. It is not necessary to think about living employees and their free time values, the era of millions who lost their jobs without means will come...