Photo Credit (Pixeles)
No one ever puts in a full eight hours. Lunch is served, news articles are read, social media is checked, texts are sent, and the restroom is used. If we are working remotely, we may also do laundry, walk the dog, or spend time with the kids.
Companies still expect employees to put in the majority of their work time during the workday, even if the COVID-19 epidemic altered workplace dynamics by redefining a healthy work-life balance. But some businesses have switched to an outcome-driven paradigm, where bosses reject workplace monitoring tactics and say they don’t care how employees get the job done.
There has been an ongoing movement for salary transparency, but information regarding the number of hours worked each day is less common, particularly in hybrid or remote workplaces. So, how many hours does a typical workday consist of? Near the end of May, a member of the anonymous workplace community Blind polled verified professionals with this very subject, and nearly 10,000 people took the time to respond. The poll’s creator said that, as a software developer, they can only manage three to three and a half hours of concentrated work per day before they start to feel burnt out. They state that in order to be recharged, a two-hour pause is necessary.
The poll concluded that 45 percent of respondents work no more than four hours every day, with some reporting even less time on the clock.
A total of 919 Amazon employees, 473 Microsoft employees, and 393 Google employees participated in the blind survey, with 40% of each group reporting working four hours or fewer each week. A hybrid timetable is in use by each of the businesses. Nevertheless, out of 316 respondents from Meta, 33% worked four hours or fewer, despite the company’s goal for hybrid by summer’s end.
Not all remote businesses will see the same outcomes, though. Out of 82 employees surveyed, 51 percent said they work four hours or less per day, thanks to Atlassian’s flexible work policies.
“Salaried workers are paid for output, not effort.” was written by an Amazon employee who backed up their vote in the comments. “If you need to be creative to solve a problem, it is crucial to take a long break to let your mind wander, like taking a long walk, a shower, going to an office party, coffee shop, etc.” reads another one on the same page.
True productivity measurement has been a topic of discussion for some time. Seeing the outcomes as extreme and dramatic wasn’t surprising to Blind’s director of public relations, Rick Chen. “With the announcement of return-to-office or in-office schedules by many of the big tech companies and banks, the topics of workload and productivity have been incredibly popular and common on Blind recently.”
The blind poll is supported by a comparable analysis conducted earlier this year by the professional information website Zippia. According to the research, the typical employee only puts in four hours and twelve minutes of actual work time out of an eight-hour workday. The study’s results show that nearly half of all employees (47%) use their work computers for personal browsing, and nearly eight in ten (78%) claim they don’t require eight hours to finish their daily tasks.
According to Kathy Morris, the researcher from Zippia, “It’s rare to actually have 100% productivity, or close to that,” during a workday.
How do businesses perceive the current situation?
Everyone in the office tries to appear busy all the time. But it’s also possible for it to be purely theatrical.
“They seem to be constantly attending meetings solely to demonstrate their productivity or to make a point,” Chen remarked. I worry that I won’t get as much done at the workplace if I have to drive there, just because everyone is in the same room with me. The sum of it is that people aren’t putting in the amount of concentrated effort they could be.
Since they could no longer physically see employees in the office due to the rise of remote work, some employers have resorted to surveillance to ensure that the majority of the eight hours were spent working. Eight out of the ten biggest private companies in the United States monitored employee output, according to a 2022 New York Times investigation. But professionals in the field of workplace management say that’s not the way to guarantee high-quality output.
Recently, Atlassian compared its own workers’ and customers’ usage of its products by looking at usage data. Atlassian offers a suite of solutions to track projects and collaboration. Customers of Atlassian work somewhat more than seven hours per day, typically during traditional business hours, while workers of Atlassian work slightly more than eight hours per day, with slightly later days but longer breaks throughout traditional work hours, according to the company’s research.
Discordant shapes
Why is there a discrepancy between this and the results that the 82 employees of Atlassian found on Blind? Does a half day consist of those breaks?
“There are more peaks of usage intensity and more troughs,” stated Annie Dean, head of Atlassian’s Anywhere division. Rest periods are being observed. In an effort to fit or incorporate aspects of their lives into their daily routine, they work furiously for a while and then take a break, extending the workday over a longer interval, and occasionally even into the weekends.
There are times when Dean herself takes a break from her duties to attend to personal matters. Some parents may use such time to get their children from school. It backs up Microsoft’s findings on the “triple peak day,” when individuals have an extra surge of energy in the evening, typically after the kids are asleep, and can get a little more done online.
“The pandemic opened opportunities for shifting, but we may have learned some really bad habits.”
The University of Georgia’s Malissa Clark teaches psychology courses.
As a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, Malissa Clark investigates issues such as workaholism and excessive work. The autonomy dilemma, which she describes as a source of anxiety, implies that individual freedom and dedication to one’s job are at odds with one another. She acknowledges that there are many positive aspects of flexible work arrangements, but she worries that it could backfire if it leads to a broader definition of employment.
“Everything is blurred,” Clark grumbled. These days, we’re not just working from home; we’re actually living in our office. At times, there is no distance. Things weren’t like that before the pandemic. We may have picked up some pretty unhealthy routines, but the pandemic did provide opportunity for change. Regarding the question of whether or not we are actually controlling our work hours and drawing clear lines between our home and office lives, it’s a step forward and a step back.
Result-focused strategy
Atlassian has a structure with unifying goals and an outcome-oriented approach rather than counting the amount of hours people labor. Dean mentioned that instead of having back-to-back Zoom sessions, her team should prioritize serious work by setting aside half of their day for it.
“Knowledge work needs to be more outcome-oriented” in the future, Dean added. I usually feel like I’ve poured my heart and soul into a game when I devote four or five hours to solving my toughest issues. In terms of my personal energy levels, I can typically contribute at my peak for four or five hours every day.
Does that imply that workers can take a break from their laptops if they complete their tasks faster? Alternately, is that the same as “quiet quitting,” in which one does the bare minimum to appear busy throughout the day?
Another element is the rise of generative AI, which enables us to hand off tedious jobs to machines, which may have dampened morale and the incentive to work hard in the workplace. Another is the “act your wage” system, in which employees do only as much as their paychecks allow.
After fewer than eight hours on the job, many workers feel like they’ve barely scratched the surface. People who took the survey either don’t see the need to do more or don’t think they’d benefit much from doing more.
One of Zippia’s past researchers is Kathy Morris.
Morris made the observation that many workers feel satisfied with doing their tasks in under eight hours. “According to our respondents, there is no pressing need to do more, and they also claim that there is a great deal of benefit to doing more.”
Terminations, working for less pay, quietly leaving
Should one individual be required to work additional hours if they are noticeably more productive than their coworker, even though both are receiving the same wage? That is related to the concept of acting your salary, which is a new trend in the workplace that states that your pay is directly proportional to the amount of work you put in. Some might assume that employees would still strive to prove themselves in the face of layoffs, but Chen argued that this is not the case.
According to Chen, “these layoffs seemed to have happened at random” and were not aimed at underperforming employees. “It appears like the company doesn’t reward that kind of behavior or loyalty,” the individuals said, “so is it even worth it to go that extra mile to work super hard?”
Even though people aren’t putting in as many hours as they once did, Morris maintained that this doesn’t imply they aren’t trying. Rather, it’s about recharging their batteries and shifting their perspective so they can approach things with a more positive frame of mind.
“As we move towards a workforce that is more results-driven, it’s crucial to focus on people’s actual accomplishments rather than their level of control over their mouse,” Morris stated.
The 40-hour work week has been in place for quite some time. The idea of a four-day workweek or a six-hour workday has floated around for a while, but nobody really uses it.
For a variety of reasons, people are putting in fewer hours during the day; therefore, there’s no reason to act as though we’re working eight hours? It necessitates a paradigm change in how society views work, according to Clark, and not only at the organizational level. Some businesses have moved on from the idea that hours worked are a measure of an employee’s performance to one that values quality over quantity, like Atlassian.
Though technology has made them more productive, Clark stated, “We really haven’t changed how we work.” This means that they aren’t putting in as many hours at the office. Email didn’t exist fifty years ago; instead, people had to use typewriters. Nowadays, everything moves at a much faster pace. Plus, we have AI.
