My first ‘blog’ was /Message (actually started out as Message from Edge City in 1999, but quickly shortened). I am resurrecting the name for a new feature, which is based on (weekly?) curation of news and research on the future of work.
Bridget Ansel writes about the culture of overwork in the Guardian (which is displacing the NY Times as my paper of record, by the way). She starts by dismissing Michael Bloomberg’s dictum of being the first in and and the last to leave as typical of the ‘extreme work ethic’ that represents the dark side of workism (the rah-rah mindless ‘giving 110%’ boosterism than animates a great deal of the psychobabble about work). Then she offers some balance:
Henry Ford cut the workweek to 40 hours back in 1914, and saw profits and productivity soar.
Ansel points out that people working too long become unproductive, but workist principles demand it anyway:
Stanford University economist John Pencavel found that a worker’s output drops sharply if he or she works too much. In one study, employees who put in more than 70 hours of work a week accomplished little more than those who worked 56 hours on a consistent weekly basis. In other words, those extra 14 hours were a complete waste of time.
If we know the consequences of overwork, why do businesses think it’s a good strategy? Employers face fixed costs per employee, which means that inducing one employee to put in long hours, even if they are less productive, may be cheaper than hiring a second employee to split the work.
Research shows that overwork is especially prevalent within many occupations that have the biggest gap between their highest and lowest-paid workers, including business and finance, the legal profession, and computer and mathematical science. And while some of these workers are well compensated, there are many more that are putting in an increasing number of hours without seeing any increase in pay.
In a startling understatement, she faces the issue:
As a greater number of people began putting in longer hours, overwork became embedded in certain workplaces and organizational cultures.
And offers up the antidote, although too sweetly, I fear:
Businesses who truly want to combat overwork, therefore, must implement and enforce policies that apply to everyone.
That begins with ditching the hours-as-productivity model. Managers should instead focus on what is actually being produced rather than how long somebody stayed at work, at least for professional workers. That also means helping employees set realistic deadlines, and then getting out of the way. Giving workers more autonomy over their work results in greater efficiency, and results in more engaged, happier workers as well.
Those who are truly dedicated to new ways of work – more democratic and humane ways of work – should actively counter workist culture that extols overwork.
A great deal of the writing about better workplaces can be terrible, playing up gimmicks like nerf guns and ping pong tables and downplaying the enormous discontent around noisy, crowded, and inflexible workspaces. Matthew Jenkin has come down in the middle in a recent piece that does include mention of nerf guns and scooters, but also mixing in some real research:
A 2014 survey (pdf) of 10,500 workers across 14 countries, commissioned by office furniture maker Steelcase, found that 69% of people were not satisfied with their working environment, in part due to a lack of privacy. A separate Steelcase-commissioned survey of more than 39,000 workers found 95% of employees said they needed quiet, private places for confidential conversations, but only 41% said they could do so, and 31% had to leave the office to get work completed.
And this:
A survey of 1,100 British office workers, published in June, shows that most workplaces (70%) now also include a communal environment – break out spaces such as a shared kitchen or beanbag area – to work from or have meetings in, providing a space for more dynamic working. This is key to meeting workers’ needs, with almost a third (29%) deeming the ability to work from a variety of different locations in the office to be important, and almost half (48%) considering access to collaboration space with colleagues an imperative.
I read a great piece by Amy Cortese about Stocksy.com, a stock photography site. But not just another site:
The most distinguishing feature, however, may be the structure of the site’s owner, Stocksy United: It is a cooperative, owned and governed by the photographers who contribute their work. Every Stocksy photographer owns a share of the company, with voting rights. And most of the money from sales of their work goes into their pockets rather than toward the billion-dollar valuations pursued by many venture-backed start-ups.
The founders are Bruce Livingstone and Brianna Wettlaufer, the folks behind iStockphot, which was acquired by Getty Images in 2006:
So using money from the sale of iStock to Getty, she and Mr. Livingstone set out to create Stocksy, paying photographers 50 to 75 percent of sales. That is well above the going rate of 15 to 45 percent that is typical in the stock photography field. The company also distributes 90 percent of its profit at the end of each year among its photographers.
Stocksy is part of a new wave of start-ups that are borrowing the tools of Silicon Valley to create a more genuine “sharing” economy that rewards the individuals generating the value.
They structured the concern as a cooperative, not the typical C corp or non-profit:
Stocksy is what’s known as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, with three classes of shares: one for executives, one for staff and a third class for photographers. There is no fee to join or annual dues; members pay just $1 for their share of stock. That collaborative approach has helped the upstart thrive in a crowded and competitive market.
The company’s revenues doubled to $7.9 million last year, and more than half $4.3 million went to the artists as royalties.
Stocksy is countering the usual on-demand economic trends:
According to a recent Pew poll, 72 percent of Americans have used some sort of shared or on-demand service, whether it’s Uber for rides or TaskRabbit for things as diverse as dog walking and household chores. But there has been much criticism that, after the platforms take their cut and the workers pay for expenses, little may trickle down to those doing the actual work.
In a beautiful bit of less is more, Aamna Mohdin recaps one major finding from Google’s Project Aristole:
[…] the best teams respect one another’s emotions and are mindful that all members should contribute to the conversation equally. It has less to do with who is in a team, and more with how a team’s members interact with one another.
A friend commented on Twitter about this:
My mom could have told them this (and saved them a lot of time and effort)
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/147799789257
