Reimagining the Workday

Usually when government involves, it gets involved, it's, they're considering one side and not the other. And they usually over under, legislate. You know, it's, and it's either, you know, government never gets it right, it's over here or it's over here, he's going to piss off somebody, you know, and I think like, so let's just game out the four hour work week. Okay? So there's a movement for a four hour workweek in California. And if government legislates will create a bunch of unforeseen problems for like customer service things or you know, where you have to react to things, I mean, who knows? I can guarantee you they haven't thought of every consideration. But what it does say is that companies need to start asking themselves, should we be considering a four hour work week? And how does a four hour workweek work for us? Because the government won't get it right, but we may be interested in this. And so I think when these things show up in legislation, what it says, it's on people's mind and people are asking the questions. And I think it's, I think instead of knee jerking and just fighting against these things, I think companies need to, you know, leadership needs to sit down and say, should we have a four hour work week? How would that look for us? How would it work for us? Would it work for our kind of business? What if we can only give it, you know, what if it works really well for some people but not all the people? Then how do we make sure everybody, you know, it creates a lot of questions that I think we have to go through the process of trying to figure it out. And if the answer is, you know, we could do something again, involve the people, are you interested? Which then raises a whole new question which I think is also.

Something that's showing up in distributed workforces is what does a full time job mean? And, and you know, older. And when I say older, I mean in age. Leaders are really struggling to understand that, you know, if you're a full time employee and I'm giving you insurance, then you're not allowed to do anything else.

But we don't know that because we know that in the past if you work from nine to five, you can do whatever you want on your nights and weekends. You can have 15 jobs if you want, as long as you're working nights and weekends. But if it's not 9 to 5 anymore, how does that look? Can you have two full time jobs? Is that wrong? And a lot of young People cannot distinguish. They're saying, you say, I can do my work whenever I want. I work from home. You have no problems with my performance. What do you care when I work and where I work? So what if you're giving me insurance? Thank you very much. I do good work for you. And I can guarantee you the young people are having these conversations and they are not encumbered by sort of traditional way of working, and they have much more of a blank sheet of paper. Now, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm saying that it's best to have these discussions yourself, because if you're not having the discussion yourself, then the hammer of legislation will probably come down and solve a few problems and create a bunch more.

I believe legislation happens and should happen when there's massive resistance and there is something that needs to happen, and for whatever reason, companies dig in and refuse to do it. I can give you plenty of examples of great versions of legislation, but I think when it comes to regulating what a workday looks like, I think companies need to start having serious conversations and start reimagining. It's all in flux. Everything is in the air and there is no certainty right now. Nobody knows what the future of work is going to look like. None of us. It's like everything's being tossed up and everybody's looking up, wondering, well, we can be a company that just waits, where is it going to land? Or we can be a company that's actually pioneering and innovating what the future of work could and should look like. And by the way, we're doing it with our people. We're not doing it by dictatorship, like this is what's going to happen, but rather we're working with our people and we're all figuring out what works and what actually makes for a really great place to work where you can actually be really productive and do really well as a company as well, where we can all take pride that we are reinventing what the future of work looks like together. And I'd rather it to happen at a company level than at a government level.