ONLINE REFLECTION 2:

"WHY WORK DOESN’T WORK HAPPEN AT WORK"

Hello everyone,

Although both videos are very interesting, I have decided to make my reflection about the second one. The video is “Why work doesn’t work happen at work”, by Jason Fried.

Basically, in this video, Fried critiques the productivity in the offices. He says that employees prefer work at home, in the train or in the library than in the office, because they want to avoid the distractions that they can find in their work place.

In both of places, the employees can have distractions but there is a difference between them: at home or library, they decide when and what kind of distractions they want to have. In the office, this is not depending on them.

From my point of view, it is good if the boss wants to give the opportunity to his employees to work outside the office, but sometimes that can be a bad choice because the employees cannot work as much as they must.  It would be a good idea if the boss does this: if the employee has different tasks per day, he could work the half of the day in the office and the other half at home. If this strategy gives good results, the boss can plan the job in a different way. Maybe in some context works at home can be a good choice, but maybe in another not (for example, those which the employees need special facilities or instruments to work).

Furthermore, Fried defends that visiting websites like Facebook or Twitter during the work time is not bad. He thinks that these visits are the modern “smoke breaks”.

I think that if the employee is working 8 hours and he or she takes a look of Facebook or Twitter once or twice during the day, is not a problem. But if the boss allows these kinds of things, it can happen that some employees waste too much time of their work. As I said before, my advice for the boss is that he has to control it. He can allow these websites during the work time, but always with responsibility for part of the employees. As important is the time work as the comfort of the employee.

To him, the real problems in the offices are the Managers and Meetings. They provoke interruptions, which in his opinion are useless. To my mind, meetings and managers chats are important to guide the employees work. Maybe some of them are pointless, so the boss should avoid them, and only organize the important ones.

So, he proposes three different solutions: don’t speak in the office, which means no interruptions; change the face-to-face for fast emails or instantaneous messaging; and delete the meetings.

To finish my share, I think that the first two solutions are fine, but in the last one I would do a qualification: delete only the unnecessary meetings.  Doing this and trying to do some changes in the office (more silence, allowed breaks in internet and work in different places than the office if the results are good) the employees can be happier and, in consequence, they will work more, so, the boss will be satisfied too.