Flexible working hours. Russian experience
Hi, Habr!
We are engaged in HR in IT, with a slight bias in the economy and work organization. We invent approaches, set tools and first experiments on ourselves.
We are interested in the topics of operational efficiency, profitability and other pleasant things in areas where the product or service is created by the intellect.
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Sometimes the possibilities for solving this type of problem lie in the area of ​​simply creating optimal conditions for work and minimizing the factors that hinder it.
Below is one such example.
The story about the schedule. Management and control.
Place actions: Moscow and Kiev. Distributed team.
Intellectual work. Self-sustaining commercial company.
Experiment duration: approximately 6 years.
Details under the cut.
We set the following schedule.
Start of work: from 8 to 10 in the morning. By choice and choice can be changed at any time.
Lunch from 12 to 14 hours. By mood and appetite.
Mandatory periods of presence at the workplace: from 10 to 12 and from 14 to 16 hours.
Thus, at least 50% of the working time is allocated to collective work, formal and non-formal meetings, etc. With rare exceptions, this was enough.
Late arrivals, that is, arrivals later than 10 in the morning and - from lunch after 14 o'clock - are punishable.
Have you ever had to run to meetings, when it already began, when everyone is waiting for you, when you understand that you are completely wrong?
And how do you feel when the boss obviously does not want to listen to the story about the stuck bus? When reprimand - brings relief from their own torments of conscience?
Total: tardiness is punished by oneself, or - if necessary - by the collective.
Incidentally, I am not sure of the humanity of this approach. But - as it is.
Everything. This is where the rules end.
However, an attentive reader will ask: what about the end of the working day?
And experienced people will have an evening nightmare: when it is necessary to hatch time, until the administration leaves. And so every day. And you plan nothing. And it is necessary, as it were, to ask for leave, when the evening and the day were long over, and so on and so forth. True?
The answer: no way.
At 16 o'clock you can go home. Get ready, get up and go.
The management was leaving before 5 pm - and there was still no one to control it.
Hatching is not necessary. I did what I thought was necessary - go home.
In fact, I do not know who and when leaves.
On Friday, employees want to “finish everything”. And this is not a very good desire. Because it turns out badly. Things are not completed - often they are “killed” or tortured. A “tortured” business does not benefit either the employee or the company.
A classic example is a “phoned customer”.
On Friday, it’s normal to take stock of what has been done, enjoy yourself and start the weekend.
Therefore, on Friday we had to consciously and purposefully make efforts to timely stop the work week of the staff.
Lyrical digression.
At the beginning of the 2000s, when ACSs appeared, I had the opportunity to “get over” control of working imputation schedules, when weekly data is pumped out, poured into summary tables and sent to line managers asking to explain “the absence of employee X, from and to date. "
And then I came to visit a Swiss IT company who also had access control systems and cards, and I asked:
- How do you control and handle deviations from a given work schedule?
Then this question seemed to me very clever.
They looked at me like an idiot. And slowly and articulately answered:
- ACS is needed in order to prevent outsiders from entering the office, and not to control their own staff.
In general, then I realized that I did not understand something.
By the way: in the Skolkovo Technopark, the access control system works exactly this way (as of March 2019), controls access, without control.
In another very large and respected Russian IT company, ACS data is available to the employee in a processed form. And what to do with them, how to react - it is up to him to decide.
Let's return to the topic “Control of work schedules”.
As is already clear: there is an ACS, there are cards — there is no control.
Only the educational power of the team.
Understanding the categorical nature of the described approach, I believe it is necessary to clarify some details.
When you see a crowd of people entering the checkpoint at 8–45 am, no matter what organization, and the same crowd coming out of it at 6-05 pm, you should know: these very people walking around the building will soon be replaced by robots, since their algorithm is simple.
IMHO.
This was the second article about happiness in labor and the “fifth paradigm”.
We are engaged in HR in IT, with a slight bias in the economy and work organization. We invent approaches, set tools and first experiments on ourselves.
We are interested in the topics of operational efficiency, profitability and other pleasant things in areas where the product or service is created by the intellect.
')
Sometimes the possibilities for solving this type of problem lie in the area of ​​simply creating optimal conditions for work and minimizing the factors that hinder it.
Below is one such example.
The story about the schedule. Management and control.
Place actions: Moscow and Kiev. Distributed team.
Intellectual work. Self-sustaining commercial company.
Experiment duration: approximately 6 years.
Details under the cut.
Background and problems to be solved
- Hard traffic on the roads and subways of Moscow, if you work according to the standard: from 9 to 18.
- And attendant traffic fatigue.
- The desire to partially comply with biorhythms of employees. This is about the "owls", "larks" and "pigeons".
- The desire to comply with biorhythms customers. They also have different daily activities.
- Achieving greater flexibility when working with different time zones (the usual difference for us: plus or minus 2-3 hours from Moscow time).
Solution Description (Last Updated)
We set the following schedule.
Start of work: from 8 to 10 in the morning. By choice and choice can be changed at any time.
Lunch from 12 to 14 hours. By mood and appetite.
Mandatory periods of presence at the workplace: from 10 to 12 and from 14 to 16 hours.
Thus, at least 50% of the working time is allocated to collective work, formal and non-formal meetings, etc. With rare exceptions, this was enough.
Late arrivals, that is, arrivals later than 10 in the morning and - from lunch after 14 o'clock - are punishable.
About punishment
Have you ever had to run to meetings, when it already began, when everyone is waiting for you, when you understand that you are completely wrong?
And how do you feel when the boss obviously does not want to listen to the story about the stuck bus? When reprimand - brings relief from their own torments of conscience?
Total: tardiness is punished by oneself, or - if necessary - by the collective.
Incidentally, I am not sure of the humanity of this approach. But - as it is.
Everything. This is where the rules end.
However, an attentive reader will ask: what about the end of the working day?
And experienced people will have an evening nightmare: when it is necessary to hatch time, until the administration leaves. And so every day. And you plan nothing. And it is necessary, as it were, to ask for leave, when the evening and the day were long over, and so on and so forth. True?
The answer: no way.
At 16 o'clock you can go home. Get ready, get up and go.
The management was leaving before 5 pm - and there was still no one to control it.
Hatching is not necessary. I did what I thought was necessary - go home.
In fact, I do not know who and when leaves.
Separate addition about Friday
On Friday, employees want to “finish everything”. And this is not a very good desire. Because it turns out badly. Things are not completed - often they are “killed” or tortured. A “tortured” business does not benefit either the employee or the company.
A classic example is a “phoned customer”.
On Friday, it’s normal to take stock of what has been done, enjoy yourself and start the weekend.
Therefore, on Friday we had to consciously and purposefully make efforts to timely stop the work week of the staff.
Control schedules
Lyrical digression.
At the beginning of the 2000s, when ACSs appeared, I had the opportunity to “get over” control of working imputation schedules, when weekly data is pumped out, poured into summary tables and sent to line managers asking to explain “the absence of employee X, from and to date. "
And then I came to visit a Swiss IT company who also had access control systems and cards, and I asked:
- How do you control and handle deviations from a given work schedule?
Then this question seemed to me very clever.
They looked at me like an idiot. And slowly and articulately answered:
- ACS is needed in order to prevent outsiders from entering the office, and not to control their own staff.
In general, then I realized that I did not understand something.
By the way: in the Skolkovo Technopark, the access control system works exactly this way (as of March 2019), controls access, without control.
In another very large and respected Russian IT company, ACS data is available to the employee in a processed form. And what to do with them, how to react - it is up to him to decide.
Let's return to the topic “Control of work schedules”.
As is already clear: there is an ACS, there are cards — there is no control.
Only the educational power of the team.
Understanding the categorical nature of the described approach, I believe it is necessary to clarify some details.
Necessary clarifications
- We are talking about a team that creates intellectual services, is in a constant and intense creative process.
- Control of working time is needed to identify cases when employee X begins to spend at work more than 50-60 hours a week. This is a clear sign of approaching burnout.
- Control of working time is necessary to identify cases when a new employee begins to spend at work more than 50-60 hours per week. This is a clear sign of his maladjustment in a team with a high prognosis for not successfully passing the probationary period.
- 4. We do not have enough data on the effectiveness of the above approach in relation to employees working remotely.
Last thing. About the future
When you see a crowd of people entering the checkpoint at 8–45 am, no matter what organization, and the same crowd coming out of it at 6-05 pm, you should know: these very people walking around the building will soon be replaced by robots, since their algorithm is simple.
IMHO.
This was the second article about happiness in labor and the “fifth paradigm”.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/444784/
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