Did you know that back in 1946. The United States government implemented the 40 hour work week for all federal employees.  Lots of companies thought this was a good idea and adopted it and before you knew it we have the 40 hour work week .

I came across this when I was reading this Life Hack article by Mark Panay called Why 9 to 5 is a Joke

It really got me thinking, the 40 hour week has never really worked for me so why has this not changed given everything that is going on and the improvements in technology. The answer seems to be that there is no easy alternative at the moment for companies to ensure collaboration and control/supervise what is going on.

In this day in age I think the technology is there to overcome this, but suspicion by employers and employees alike stops technologies and practices that could change the way we work from being implemented.

These are some of the attitudes that could enable a change in the work week.

• The 10am – 12pm collaboration zone – Make it so there is always an agreed time where everyone is available to collaborate
• Occupation Health and Safety – stop making companies legally responsible for peoples at home office environment
• Bring your own device – people choose the technology that suits their work and personal life
• Job descriptions by expectation not task – if you judge performance by expectation as opposed to tasks then the need to supervise is reduced dramatically
• Stop hiding behind email – companies often need to bring people physically together to overcome what is being avoided by hidding behind email
• Video Conferencing – people change their perception around video conferencing and be as comfortable siting in front of a camera as sitting in an office
• Adoption of subscription software – One of the benefits of subscription software is that it creates an environment where businesses are always up-to-date with the latest advancements with the software they are subscribed to.  This allows people to remove this issue of having old versions stopping people from using new versions when not in the office
• Remote security – IT departments deal with security and stop believing that security within an office location is so much better than everywhere else
• Cloud – IT departments get real about using the cloud to stop being dependent on location for software performance
• Automatic Answer- automatic answer of video calls when a person is available.

Your thoughts?

Ref:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/why-9-5-joke-and-how-deal.html