Does your Work environment Work For You?

The world is rapidly changing around us, but for the most part, we’re still locked into an outdated work setup. It might be time to Wrework our work lives.

- Liesl Robertson

What is your workday really like? If you’re working in a traditional office environment, odds are it’s pretty counterproductive: clocking in at a set time every morning after a tedious commute, sitting in front of a computer for hours on end, having lunch at your desk and schlepping home through traffic just to check emails and finish up a few tasks, all while you try to have some semblance of a ‘normal’ home life… Does any of this sound familiar?

In a society that glorifies being busy, it’s easy to fall into the trap of letting your job take over your life. We’ve come to think of the ideal employee as the ‘face-time warrior’: first to arrive in the morning and last to leave, never taking time off, answering emails after hours and taking work home. But where is the balance? And does putting in long hours really result in peak performance?

The Hours

In 2007, a US software company called 37 signals (later renamed Basecamp) decided to launch an experiment: they cut their workweek down from five days to four. The result? No change in output. So they made the change permanent – for six months of the year, Basecamp employees work only from Monday to Thursday.

Not everyone took to the idea. Tara Weiss, a journalist working for Forbes, wrote a critical piece titled ‘Why a Four-Day Workweek Doesn’t Work’, arguing that ‘packing 40 hours into four days isn’t necessarily an efficient way to work. Many people find that eight hours are tough enough; requiring them to stay for an extra two could cause morale and productivity to decrease.’ Company co-founder Jason Fried was quick to respond, agreeing that 10-hour days would indeed be stressful – which is why they had stuck with eight-hour days. So how do his employees get just as much done, even after a 20% reduction in working hours?