Name: Why Enforcing a 9-to-5 Workday Is Really Stupid
Uploaded: 2016-06-09
Duration: 3 min 39 s
Description: Two executives discuss.

Why Enforcing a 9-to-5 Workday Is Really Stupid

This is a hairy one. Everyone thinks that they have the best way to work, whether it's remote working, flexible hours or, um, for example, Luminary Labs. We work until six, and then everyone goes home and nobody emails at night. I swear to God, it really happens. So, um, let's talk about that, Alex, because you guys have you seem to figure out a really novel way of allowing people to work work when they work best. Is that correct? Yeah, that's that's really the goal. And it's especially something that, as as we grow, we think about how that continues to evolve. But the way that it started out roughly is that Catherine and I had worked at McKinsey and company is where we met Catherine, my co founder, and we, um, had times where we needed to work at times that we didn't work back. Perfect examples. I am not a morning person, not even a little bit. And if you need me there for 6 a.m. meeting like I will get up for a drink, a lot of coffee stare at my computer screen without doing anything for an hour, and then I will be sharp at six. But if I can choose, I will wake up at 8 30 be in the office by nine. Like that is how much I value sleeping in. But I will work till 345 in the morning, because nighttime is when I get into slow and when I'm really engaged. So I've had these conversations before to the total opposite and imagining that a single system could work for everyone. Um, a single set of hours sort of seemed silly, And so when we first started, of course, when you're small, there's no need to have set hours. But as we grew, there were at times push it to say, Well, should we just tell people what time you need to be in the office? And the way we think about it is that most people are going to overlap roughly from like 10 to 4. Most people are in the office, so people do work from home regularly and figure out what their manager some have it on the schedule every week. Some people do it when they need to, but when we when we think about that, it allows, you know, one of our engineers have been working with me for three or four years. Now, Um, she's also a night owl and she'll be working late and then she'll roll in at 11. But she's got an amazing work done when she worked best. And there's no reason that when she walks in, people should be like she's slacking. She's not, Um so for us, it's all about Are you getting your job done? If you're not, then there's a different question, which is It might help to be in person so we can sort of see what's going on and and and coach you and make sure that you have the chance to grow and things aren't off. But if you're getting things done, But how does it actually work? Because I I know many companies where they're flexible hours, but it means that you're actually working 24 7. We don't track specifically your hours or where you are, and but we do have a shared out of office calendar, and so you can see if someone is going to be out. You can double check the like. Okay, they're they're out this morning, and it could be because they have a doctor's appointment? Um, our head of account management Son just graduated from, um, preschool. I guess it was It was preschool or kindergarten, but literally was like I don't even know. But like, there's a 2 p.m. Graduation ceremony and he left and went to it, and it was no problem. No one thought twice about it, Didn't get approval for it. And he got his work done when he got his work done. And so I think that's part of if you're engaged in some people. Like I like to work while watching TV between nine and 10 because it's kind of brainless, and there's some things I just get done in that zone. But I also will sometimes take a walk in the middle of the day and just, like, call a friend and like that shouldn't feel strange. Yeah, I think it's just the nature of knowledge work, right? The knowledge is always, always gonna be there, and you can produce that work whenever, wherever and so building systems and building culture and building. Um, sort of, uh, acceptance around this idea. That work can be done anywhere at any time, Um, and build and using technology to enable that. I think that's the powerful thing about, uh, really transforming the way people work the way people work the way people work.