PRODUCTIVITY
Saying no to the four-day workweek
Proponents make ambitious claims about its power to fix the way we work. But for some companies, the four-day workweek is not all it’s cracked up to be
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IN MANY PREVIOUS editions of this newsletter, we have looked at the remarkable success and popularity of the four-day work week being experimented with across the globe, from a major pilot project in the UK to a number of municipalities in Ontario implementing it for their staff.
And while the idea has proven successful, not every business has loved it ― some have given it the old college try and are going back to the old ways.
South of the border, the marketing research firm Alter Agents ditched it after a 10-week test. Cracks started to appear when some workers kept working from home on their day off, while others were more resolute in staying away from work.
“Neither of those are wrong. They’re both valid approaches,” founder Rebecca Brooks said. “But because there wasn’t consistency across employees, it created confusion and frustration and affected the dynamics between our employees.”
Across the pond, UK firm Allcap ― an engineering and industrial supplies company ― tried a version of the experiment (a nine-day schedule over two weeks) but abandoned it halfway through the pilot program at its trading sites, while its warehouses and manufacturing centres were able to cope with it. The nature of their business just wasn’t adaptable, the owner said.
“As opposed to 10 normal workdays, we found that employees would have nine extreme ones, and once they got to their scheduled day off they were exhausted,” he said.
In the tapestry of workplaces experimenting with it, the companies reverting away from the four-day week are generally the minority. And in each case, it’s not the concept itself which they struggled with, but how it fit their unique circumstances.
At Alter Agents, when they cancelled the four-day week, they replaced it with a new pilot program giving employees an extra day off each month, something Brooks said has been successful. “While on paper it felt like going from four days off a month to one day off a month was a big change, people have been happy with this program because when that day comes, they can actually take it.” Kieran Delamont
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GOVERNANCE
The diversity lag
Our biggest companies are appointing more women to board roles, but representation of visible minorities remains limited
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ACCORDING TO A new study, America’s largest firms are beating their counterparts in the Great White North when it comes to diversity at the director level.
Data compiled by ISS Corporate Solutions looked at the makeup of boards of directors of companies listed on the S&P 500 compared to the S&P/TSX Composite Index to get a sense of where the most gains are being made in terms of diversity.
Where Canada excels is in gender diversity: 33.7 per cent of all Canadian directors are women, compared to 32.3 per cent of American directors. That reflects a lot of progress ― in 2020, Canadian women only held about 28 per cent of board seats.
Where Canada falls behind is in terms of racial diversity. For all our national attachments to multiculturalism and diversity, racial and ethnic minorities made up only 14.1 per cent of directorships ― nine points behind the U.S., where 23.6 per cent of seats were held by minorities.
Some have looked at the state of diversity overall and questioned whether high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are actually producing the material changes they set out to.
“By focusing on structural issues, we are not saying that DEI programs should ignore individuals’ unconscious biases,” wrote Andrea Kramer and Alton Harris in Fast Company. “Of course, these biases must be recognized and countered, but this needs to be done other than through anti-bias training.”
Still, the Canadian lead at ISS Corporate Solutions Chan Pedris is ultimately hopeful that Canadian companies are improving, and that transparency regulations will accelerate that.
It was only in 2020 that publicly traded companies in Canada were required to disclose diversity statistics under the Canada Business Corporations Act, and it will take some time for that impact to be fully felt. “The numbers themselves will see a significant pick-up from 2023 onwards, since the CBCA made the disclosure requirements,” Pedris said. Kieran Delamont
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Terry Talks: Why your new hires quit (and how to stop it)
| There is nothing more frustrating for employers and HR departments than to spend weeks or months recruiting a new employee who, at the end of the day, quits his or her job anyway. Most of the reasons why people quit quickly result from a poor onboarding process. In other words, organizations that don’t deliver on pre-hire promises, fail to cultivate a positive company culture or refuse to take a vested interest in their employees’ growth are likely to find themselves facing challenges as a result of the quick quitting phenomenon. | | | |
WORKSPACE
Office, sweet office
So, what exactly is “resimercial” design, and why is it having a moment?
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AS A MANAGER, one of the hardest parts about trying to get your employees back into the office is often that it amounts to pretty poor environmental competition ― home, after all, is comfortable, while offices are, well, stuffy, corporate, fluorescent-lit offices.
Now, bosses who have been paying exorbitant rent for office space more suited to tumbleweeds than workers have a new idea: outfitting those spaces to resemble the cozy homes workers are so resistant to leave.
The approach, dubbed “resimercial” ― interior design that combines elements of both residential and commercial design ― involves bringing an at-home vibe to traditionally cold corporate surrounds.
“A combination of residential and commercial, resimercial design brings aspects of the home into the contemporary workplace,” explains design firm Coalesse. “Creating homelike environments ― where we truly enjoy spending time ― is one way to accommodate the increased demand placed on employees.”
While many companies have thought about downsizing their office footprint, a resimercial approach might suggest converting the unused space to livable amenities. In particular, this means things like couches, complete (and comfortable) kitchens, or outdoor spaces for work in nice weather.
One of the surprising features of resimercial design is an increased interest in installing fireplaces in the workplace, which are “making a comeback,” according to architect Donald Rattner. “No longer tethered to space-eating flues and chases, fireplaces and fire pits can now be installed in workplaces nearly at will, codes permitting,” he writes in Work Design Magazine. “That could well prove a boon for creativity, as there is a long history of ‘aha’ moments striking people while situated fireside.”
The logic behind resimercial design is that comfortable employees are happier and significantly more productive and creative, suggests Jeff Knoll of Ted Moudis Associates. “Creating an authentic space is the true core of residential-inspired design for the workplace. We need to create experiences that help the workforce readjust to the office and promote mental well-being. As we learn to navigate a sense of ‘new normal’, concerns about the transition back to an office setting are valid, and resimercial design could be the answer to many of those questions.” Kieran Delamont
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ETHICS
Hey, fork it over
As employees return to the office, the office cutlery is disappearing at shockingly high rates
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NO MATTER HOW resimercial you make your office, though, it won’t change the one constant you can rely on: your coworkers driving you nuts ― including that despised, loathed, despicable character, the cutlery thief.
“As people return to workplaces all over the world, they’re discovering something else has disappeared — the office cutlery,” reads a recent report in the hallowed pages of the Wall Street Journal. “Of course, communal items have gone missing from offices since the dawn of the cubicle. But these days another trend is merging with the back-to-the-office movement: the eco-conscious workspace.”
That’s been a boon for cutlery thieves. With no more single-use plastics, offices are now commonly filled with prized metal cutlery, just sitting there, waiting to be surreptitiously stashed in one’s lunchpail. In Australia, a documentary producer even made a radio segment probing the question.
Ben Stiller of National Truck League here in London, was featured in the article, as he has deputized himself as the fork police. An initial crackdown ― a stern email and a sign posted in the kitchen ― seemed to work. Briefly. “Two weeks later, they were all gone again,” he told the WSJ. “We never solved the problem.”
Many have tried to figure out why the problem of stolen office cutlery is so pervasive. A 2005 study even went deep down this rabbit hole in an attempt to understand how cutlery theft was affecting modern workplaces. In “The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute” (try saying that five times fast) researchers looked at both what was going missing, and the impact it was having on the workplace. Which was, apparently, significant.
“Teaspoons are an essential part of office life. Simultaneously, the rapid rate of teaspoon loss shows that their availability (and therefore office life) is under constant assault,” they wrote.
“Teaspoon displacement and loss leads to the use of forks, knives and staplers to measure out coffee and sugar, inevitably causing a reduction in employee satisfaction; in addition, large amounts of time may be wasted searching for teaspoons, both factors leading to decreased employee efficiency.” Kieran Delamont
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