Working late? Don’t bother
Hello and welcome to Working It.
We are soon to embark on “Global AI Immersion Week” here at the FT, an admirable internal initiative which, as an AI refusenik, I’ve signed up to attend. Every time Google offers to help me summarise an email, or write a document . . . I ignore the prompt.
Scrolling through data in the (fascinating/scary) annual work trend index from Microsoft and LinkedIn, I find that only 25 per cent of companies are, like the FT, planning to offer generative AI training to staff this year. If yours isn’t . . . that’s not a good sign. In the absence of leadership and training, the work trend index finds that a lot of staff are improvising, and bringing their own AI to work. That sounds a bit like a “bake sale”🧁 approach to progress: outcomes are going to be hit and miss.
Let me know AI thoughts and what works for you. I need your tips: isabel.berwick@ft.com.
Read on for some more evidence to back up your decision to switch off the laptop at 6pm, and in Office Therapy I advise a new graduate who wants to go into the office. (Shocking, I know.)
There’s no new Working It podcast because even audio producers need a holiday — we will return next week.
Working long hours? Read this ⬇️
A long-hours workplace culture is a fact of life in many sectors, but the research keeps piling up to show that working late, and not taking breaks — is a huge productivity block. My new favourite statistic is that “employees who log off at the end of the workday register 20 per cent higher productivity scores than those who feel obliged to work after hours.”
That figure comes from a Slack survey of 10,000 desk workers. Christina Janzer, Slack’s US-based SVP of research and analytics and head of its Workforce Lab, came to the FT this week to talk about AI, productivity and why “Goldilocks” days are the way to balance our working lives and work better.
Christina will also be a guest on a forthcoming Working It podcast about the real-world uses of AI that will help our day-to-day productivity. My favourite: getting it to summarise everything that’s happened on email and Slack (other platforms are available) while you are on holiday, and prioritise what you need to look at first on your return. This might finally be the game-changer that stops us from logging on from the beach 🏖️.
The dismal late-working statistic has an interesting exception, as Christina told me: “If you are working after hours by choice — maybe it’s because you are really passionate about what you are working on, or maybe it’s because your schedule means you can take an hour in the middle of the day to pick up your kids from school — if it’s your choice — then you don’t see the same negative effect on productivity.”
This confirms something I’ve long felt: not all after hours and weekend work is bad. But one of the main reasons why we work into the quiet evening, when we won’t be disturbed, is that we don’t get enough “focus” time in the day. The main culprit? Meetings, obviously.
And this is where Christina’s idea of a “Goldilocks” approach to time management comes in. As in, choosing the option that is “just right” — like Goldilocks and the bears’ chairs, beds and porridge bowls in the fairy tale 🥣.
Let’s assume an eight-hour workday 👀. Desk workers say the ideal amount of focus time is four hours a day. “In order to get that,” Christina told me, “the most time they should be spending in meetings is two hours a day.” That quota also meets our need for collaboration at work.
The rest of the time should be spent on connecting with others and rest. Connection could be a shared lunch break or a coffee. And the “rest” part is vital. “Rest is something we have a hard time talking about in workplace culture,” Christina told me. (I’d say so. Eating lunch at your desk should never happen 🥗, and yet . . .) Rest could be a 15-minute walk around the block to get some fresh air. “When you take a break, you are more productive,” she confirmed.
So the magic Goldilocks workday formula is: 4+2+2. When that’s unbalanced, it’s usually because we have too many meetings and have to react to other people’s demands. This is what Christina and others call “the work of work”, rather than actual work — see also Cal Newport’s description of it as “pseudo-productivity”. Too often, focus work (aka actual work) gets pushed into the evening.
Implementing a balanced workday with fewer meetings and more 15 minute breaks will be an uphill struggle in many workplaces. But the data is out there — less is indeed more.
Office Therapy
The problem: I am graduating this summer and looking for a job. My skills are in demand and I am planning to take my time over the job search. I am keen to work in an office, rather than remotely. Is that going to reduce my choice of employers?
Isabel’s advice: If you are upfront about wanting an in-person experience, you can be sure there will be employers to match. The advice I would give you, though, is to be led by the desirability of the job — rather than the working arrangements. You may find that (for example) three days in the office ends up suiting you well. You could always choose to work in a co-working space (maybe even paid for by the employer — you can ask!) on remote days.
Many employers are keen to offer flexibility, and although that’s normally interpreted as the freedom to work from home, it can also mean going to the office more often than is mandated. I guess the bigger question is: would there be anyone in the office when you got there on, say, a Friday?
If everyone is remote or coming in two days a week, it’s going to be a lonely life in the office for you 🙁. But, as I found during the pandemic, it doesn’t take many people to liven up a workplace, and the upside of emptier (though not totally empty) workplaces is often a chance to get “face time” with senior leaders on days when fewer people are there.
Does this sound Machiavellian? It isn’t. There’s some interesting academic research on “passive face time” that you might want to read — managers’ perceptions of employees are affected by their presence in the workplace. You can turn that to your advantage.
Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Email: isabel.berwick@ft.com. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.
Five top stories from the world of work
US students face recruitment challenges after Gaza protests: FT reporters investigate how being the public face of campus protests or being very vocal on social media has impacted students hoping to land prestigious jobs.
Professional make-up artists help executives keep up appearances: When you see a woman looking incredibly well-presented on stage, she may well have had a 6am visit from a make-up artist. Emma Jacobs discovers one tip we can all manage: wearing powder on stage (for men and women).
Employers face a climate conundrum: Pilita Clark digs into the numbers to find out how many younger workers are changing jobs to work for organisations that take positive action on the climate crisis.
Why a jacket is the making of a man: I am not a man but I do like jackets, and Robert Armstrong is a fantastic writer. As workwear gets more casual, his tips are universally applicable. Great reader comments, too.
Palliative care doctor Kathryn Mannix: “It’s so much about listening” Lunch with the FT is always a good read, but if you feel work is taking too much of your life, Emma Jacobs’ interview with the author of With the End in Mind will help refocus you on what matters.
This week’s giveaway
Alex Edmans is professor of finance at London Business School, and someone whose work is often recommended to me by Working It listeners and readers. In his new book, May Contain Lies, he tackles misinformation, wherever it happens. The subtitle is: “How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases — And What We Can Do About It”. Plenty of this is workplace-relevant: Alex suggests how we can create corporate cultures that encourage open debate.
We have 10 copies to give away, via this form. All entries received before 5pm on Tuesday 11 June will be eligible.
A word from the Working It community
It’s the big FT Women in Business Summit next week in London (come and say hello if you are there — I am moderating a panel on the future of work — and the price of flexibility. The answers might not fit into 45 minutes but we will have a go . . . 🙆♀️)
Doing the preparation for this event reminded me that the newsletter last month about CEO churn — and particularly the shorter tenure of women at the top — has continued to generate lots of interesting messages.
There’s a huge appetite to examine the nuanced reasons why women may get to the top — but don’t stay there. Here’s Rachael Saunders, deputy director of the Institute of Business Ethics, who makes a point that I hadn’t seen before:
“Women CEOs are still such a novelty in major companies that they immediately become a high-profile public figure, and will be asked to do far more speaking engagements, to support women in leadership initiatives etc. This is even more likely if they come from a diverse background. That is an additional pressure in an already very pressured role.
“As a consequence, women CEOs may feel they have to take more public roles earlier than they would have otherwise chosen to. That public profile might also build unrealistic superstar expectations from the board and stakeholders.”
There’s so much to say on this — do email me your thoughts: isabel.berwick@ft.com
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