Goodman Masson, London: Its Friday, its 3.30 – go home
Goodman Masson is a financial recruitment agency, based in London. A couple of summers ago they decided to stop work at 3.30 on Fridays, enabling staff to enjoy the weather and start the weekend early.
“I analysed all the data”, explains CEO Guy Hayward “and it had no effect on the level of sales. We track the phone time of our consultants and this actually went up, as did morale. So we extended it throughout the year. At 3.30pm every Friday I send round an email telling people to go home.”
Toyota, Sweden: 6 hours shifts are more productive than 8 hours
Toyota’s assembly line in Gothenberg has switched from 8 hour shifts to 6 hours. Martin Banck explained the approach at Woohoo‘s happiness conference in Copenhagen earlier this month. (If your Swedish is good, check out his talk).
There was no fall in production and the change led to happier staff, happier customers and more profits. With both shifts able to be fitted into a daytime, costs fell. Martin did display a slide on the disadvantages of the shorter day. The slide was blank.
Google: Leave your laptop at the office
Although a great place to work, Google has a notoriously long-hours culture. However even at Google, there are attempts to get people to work less and avoid burn out. In Work Rules, Laszlo Bock explains how Google Dublin introduced “Dublin goes dark”, encouraging people to leave at 6pm, and providing drop-off locations for laptops, to prevent people working in the evening at home.
He quotes People Operations leader Helen Tynan: “Lots of people chatted the next day about what they had done, and how long the evening had seemed with lots of times for doing things.” The idea spread from the People dept to the whole of Google Dublin and has now gone international.
Judge people on results not hours
The approach promoted by ROWE (Results only Work Environment) is that employees should be judged on their results and not on the time they spend in the office. Advocate range from the Girl Scouts of San Gorgino tot he retailer Gap. It certainly makes sense to me.
At Happy we have always sought to avoid a long hours culture. It is rarely productive and we want our customers to meet people who are fresh, relaxed and happy. We expect people to work hard (and work whenever it suits them) but if they are working beyond their 38 hour week, we will work with them to reduce it.
Time to cut those hours?
The results of the Gothenberg city council experiment will be interesting. A Swedish friend tells me that this is only one of a range of Swedish organisations, in the public and private sector, exploring shorter working weeks.
Do you still have a long hours work culture? Or do you have a great example, like Goodman Masson or Toyota Gothenberg, of getting more done in less time. If you do, please share it int he comments below.
