8-to-5? no thanks.
why is everyone so eight-to-five? i mean, what happened to the philippines that it became an offices-here-have-an-eight-to-five-schedule nation?
is it because people have no choice?
is it because it’s part of a company’s rulz and regulationz? employees cannot not follow the system - unless they are ready to face dire consequences. for example, companies have in their contracts a “work hours” clause stating how many hours an employee should log in for every normal workday. an example would be “to complete eight hours of work during the eight and a half hour stay of the employee in the company premises.” as part of a legal contract, any breach would merit punishment : salary deduction, cancellation of certain benefits, added work hours, or at worst, termination. (though i know some people out there would love to get fired from their current jobs)
is it because of foreign influence?
some companies might be pressured to set an 8-to-5 policy because of investors - foreign investors who are used to the 8-t0-5 setting working for them and investors who wouldn’t feel good if their investments didn’t conform to the tried-and-tested norm.
the 8-to-5 work hours for the corporate setting might work like a charm with western countries like the US and Europe. primarily because the US and Europe have their countries divided into 3 and 2 time zones, respectively.
imagine this. at 5pm in new york, it is just 2pm in los angeles. that means while one part of the US is already taking a break, another part is still working. those 3 time zones effectively give US an 11-hour work-shift sans the overtime every day! this might not make sense much in paper, but when a country has more work hours over other countries, it means that it is able to interact with other countries more - more business opportuinities for them!
so is it their fault that their geography forced them to adapt more than one time zone? nopez. it only means that the 8-to-5 setting provides an advantage for them not available in single time-zone countries.
so how is this relevant to the philippine setting? for a country that has a shorter work time, the eight to five corporate model will not do. i think we should work less hours but work on more jobs at a time. rather than sit at one job for eight hours, we should work on two jobs with four hours apiece.
compressing work and taking additional responsibility will teach us how efficient we can be. shorter hours doesn’t necessarily mean lost quality as long as we really work. i doubt if filipinos actually work every minute of that 8 hour shift. unless close supervision is present or strict work ethics are enforced, the watered-down eight-hour shifts that supervisors see are really just four hours worth of efficient work.
now some might argue that this will lead to a very stressful environment where everyone is on the move. well, i don’t think the alternative has done our country much good. i believe filipinos can benefit a lot from this, being efficient, hard-working and resourceful that most people are. despite having limited access to all the good stuffs in life.
i know of someone. he’s one of those financially challenged people, feeding a family of six with no education to get him a cool-paying job. but that never brought him down. at 6am, i would see him going around villages, delivering hot pan de sal. by 10 am, he’d be going around again the villages, looking for newspapers and bottles that he could re-sell. and if ever he gets lucky, he’s out again under the sun by 2pm, mowing grass of empty lots for nearby occupants. he is one of those filipinos who have shown me that nothing is impossible.
But we really not that 40-man-hours-per-week schedule!
a year ago, 2005, the Philippine government tried a four-day-work-week. government employees didn’t have to work during fridays. i don’t think it did much good to boost the productivity of the offices. i heard no reports on the media (or at least I was not able to read / hear anything about it) detailing the results of the experiment. i have to assume the lack of praise or good points regarding the experiment meant … that that media had other better things to talk about.
if we are going to get into a 4-day work week or a 4 hour schedule (4 is just an arbitrary number, change it as you like, as long as it’s not 8 for the purpose of this discussion), proper mental preparation must be in place. while employees had a 4-day work-week, they had a 5-day work-week perspective. there is no urgency in this. i am not saying this goes for ALL offices or that employees slack off - that’s not the point. that said, we cannot think of a four-hour work schedule with our current eight-hour work schedule in mind. it simply does tally out. 8 is not equal to 4.
some companies, most of them manufacturing, won’t make it with a 4-day work week or shortened production time. and there’s not much we can do about it. maximum asset utilization is not equal to shorter work hours… unless one can setup a factory whose manual labor is replaced by robotics…
but that would be expensi– unethical, right?
our priorities are our stakeholders and inves– employees, right?
that wouldn’t sound right on a public press confere– to the families involved, right?
before you companies tell me that it can’t be done, think about your priorities and perspective first. much can be solved if you think about it even before you speak or none can be solved if you don’t think about it even if we talk all day about it.
so how do we go about it? that’s where management *cough* information *ahem* systems come into the picture. with the advent of technology, work these days no longer take as long to finish as they did before. we can set up support systems to help automate and eliminate manual tasks that would otherwise be prone to error. we could also invest on newer machineries that are more efficient, effective and environment-friendly from the ones that we used to have. sounds like a plan eh? a pretty expensive one too.
well, i’m not here to promote buying stuff that can do work better when the current stack of assets can do work fine as it is. for some companies that are just concerned with making things work, the last thought bubble is not an option. but for those who are looking for ways to improve despite the damage it can do to the company’s profit, be my guest.
IMHO
personally, i would rather work from 9am to 12noon everyday and spread additional work throughout the day whenever it’s convenient or needed - allowing me to play, exercise and indulge myself in my other interests. stress, anyone?
i am not against the system though. i respect and follow systems whenever i find the underlying principles, motivation and goals appropriate and beneficial to everyone concerned. for instance, when an officer says that i have to wear an ID, by virtue of security concerns, i will wear an ID. no questions asked.
if i am going to work from 8-to-5 straight, as long as the principles, motivation and goals behind such rule are made clear to me, i will work that eight-hour-shift. however, right now i have several questions that prevent me from doing so.
