13 ms·

Posting to a top-level comment: The productivity claim has been removed from the Japanese report[0]. An erratum at the bottom of the page dated November 8, 2019

by getoj 6y ago

Posting to a top-level comment: The productivity claim has been removed from the Japanese report[0]. An erratum at the bottom of the page dated November 8, 2019 says this: "In the announcement dated October 31, one of the listed "improvements" from the 2019 Summer Work-Life Choice Challenge was an increase of 39.9% in labor productivity (sales revenue per employee) in August 2019 compared to August 2018, with a graph below. "While this number is factual, it is not solely the result of this challenge, and was achieved due to a number of different factors. "To avoid misunderstanding, we have removed that claim from the above summary of the direct effects of the challenge." [0] https://news.microsoft.com/ja-jp/2019/10/31/191031-published-the-results-of-measuring-the-effectiveness-of-our-work-life-choice-challenge-summer-2019/ https://news.microsoft.com/ja-jp/2019/10/31/191031-published...

ekianjo 6y ago
> was achieved due to a number of different factors. How surprising that something is used as a single variable explanation by a PR department. I for sure have never seen that before. Glad to know they backtracked on that, but it's too late since the news has been out there already for a long time and this CNN article perpetuates it.
- soneca 6y ago
  I would not blame solely company PR departments for this, often the press exaggerates claims for clicks. I remember working on a non-profit that provided philanthropy advice to millionaires. Once we hosted a small conference and we ran a very informal poll about the said millionaires satisfaction with their own philanthropy. The result was something like 32 out of 40 wanted to donate more money annually than what they were currently donating (as opposed with “satisfied” with the amount or wanted to “donate less”). We mentioned the result to a journalist covering the event and of course the newspaper headline was ”80% of Brazilian millionaires want to donate more”. No mention that it was a poll during the event with only 40 people that were highly selected to people wanting to donate more (the purpose of the event was teach how to donate well). On the contrary, someone reading would have the impression that our organization funded a well-done proper research covering a significant sample of all millionaires in Brazil. That was not our PR, that misleading headline was solely the journalist creation. The event itself was pretty boring, so they went with that headline to justify their time investment in covering it I think.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > I would not blame solely company PR departments for this, often the press exaggerates claims for clicks. PR specifically knows how the press reacts and tailors their messages accordingly. Also, there's a lot of cross-pollination between people working for PR and people who work in the press.
- didibus 6y ago
  True, that said, I think it's a good data point towards a 4 day workweek none the less. I feel most people would have predicted the outcome to be negative or hurt by the four day workweek. So we don't know if it's sufficient to increase productivity, but it clearly isn't sufficient to decrease it either. And that's already pretty promising data.
  - beforeolives 6y ago
    I don't think that you can make that conclusion. How do you know that a 5-day week with the other interventions still in place isn't better than a 4-day week? Or how do you know that keeping everything the same and moving to a 4-day week wouldn't have a negative/neutral effect?
    - didibus 6y ago
      > How do you know that a 5-day week with the other interventions still in place isn't better than a 4-day week? That we don't know. > how do you know that keeping everything the same and moving to a 4-day week wouldn't have a negative/neutral effect? I don't know why we'd want to keep everything the same. What we do know here at least is that a four day work week implemented as it was in the experiment did not result in negative or neutral effects. And that's already quite the positive outcome which means more experimentation is mandated as it seems there's hope for four day work week being practical and realistically implemented by companies without hurting their output.
      - econnors 6y ago
        > What we do know here at least is that a four day work week implemented as it was in the experiment did not result in negative or neutral effects. We don't know that, though. Maybe sales would've increase 10x with a 5-day work week and the 4-day week hurt significantly.
        didibus 6y ago
        I'm saying negative or neutral to absolute growth, not to opportunity. Basically, what would you have said prior to knowing about this experiment if I asked you: "What do you think will happen if we do this experiment to productivity?" I think a lot of people would have said probably you'll see a decrease. But instead we saw a 40% increase. Now I'm assuming Microsoft has YoY data, so I don't know if 40% yearly increase is the norm, above the norm or below and that be interesting to know. But still, this 40% increase is surprising to what I think I would have guessed and assume a lot others would have too, that you'd see a decrease or maybe neutral. So I'm not saying it tells us 4 day work week is better then 5 or 6 or 7. But it seems like a viable model that still allows for quite a bit of productive growth. And that's already a good start for it, one I'm a little surprised about. Cause it means that possibly time worked has minimal impact on productivity, at least within a 1 day margin. It seems other factors might be more important, maybe simply strategic decisions, cutting out of time wastes like useless meetings or discussions, etc.
harikb 6y ago
> In addition to reducing working hours, managers urged staff to cut down on the time they spent in meetings and responding to emails. > They suggested that meetings should last no longer than 30 minutes. Employees were also encouraged to cut down on meetings altogether by using an online messaging app (Microsoft’s, of course). If I am told I am part of an experiment, I would do my best to make it a success and make my 3-day weekend permanent :)
- mmcdermott 6y ago
  I've wondered about this. In some limited areas, it seems like change helps keep things fresh and people off of autopilot. From that perspective, it's possible that if prolonged the results would level out. And, yes, I say this as someone who would rather have a four day workweek.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    Autopilot is nothing bad. For repeative tasks that cannot be improved with reasonable amount of ressources, you are better off in autopilot. It saves energy for critical times.
- MikeTheGreat 6y ago
  There's even a name for this: Hawthorne Effect From Wikipedia: "The Hawthorne effect refers to a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect (Yes, the Hawthorne Effect is more general than the specific case here where people want to influence the outcome in a particular way, but it's still cool that this is known to be a thing)
  - lupire 6y ago
    That's not the Hawthorne effect, that's people responding to incentives.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by getoj 6y ago

ekianjo 6y ago

> was achieved due to a number of different factors. How surprising that something is used as a single variable explanation by a PR department. I for sure have never seen that before. Glad to know they backtracked on that, but it's too late since the news has been out there already for a long time and this CNN article perpetuates it.

soneca 6y ago
I would not blame solely company PR departments for this, often the press exaggerates claims for clicks. I remember working on a non-profit that provided philanthropy advice to millionaires. Once we hosted a small conference and we ran a very informal poll about the said millionaires satisfaction with their own philanthropy. The result was something like 32 out of 40 wanted to donate more money annually than what they were currently donating (as opposed with “satisfied” with the amount or wanted to “donate less”). We mentioned the result to a journalist covering the event and of course the newspaper headline was ”80% of Brazilian millionaires want to donate more”. No mention that it was a poll during the event with only 40 people that were highly selected to people wanting to donate more (the purpose of the event was teach how to donate well). On the contrary, someone reading would have the impression that our organization funded a well-done proper research covering a significant sample of all millionaires in Brazil. That was not our PR, that misleading headline was solely the journalist creation. The event itself was pretty boring, so they went with that headline to justify their time investment in covering it I think.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > I would not blame solely company PR departments for this, often the press exaggerates claims for clicks. PR specifically knows how the press reacts and tailors their messages accordingly. Also, there's a lot of cross-pollination between people working for PR and people who work in the press.
didibus 6y ago
True, that said, I think it's a good data point towards a 4 day workweek none the less. I feel most people would have predicted the outcome to be negative or hurt by the four day workweek. So we don't know if it's sufficient to increase productivity, but it clearly isn't sufficient to decrease it either. And that's already pretty promising data.
- beforeolives 6y ago
  I don't think that you can make that conclusion. How do you know that a 5-day week with the other interventions still in place isn't better than a 4-day week? Or how do you know that keeping everything the same and moving to a 4-day week wouldn't have a negative/neutral effect?
  - didibus 6y ago
    > How do you know that a 5-day week with the other interventions still in place isn't better than a 4-day week? That we don't know. > how do you know that keeping everything the same and moving to a 4-day week wouldn't have a negative/neutral effect? I don't know why we'd want to keep everything the same. What we do know here at least is that a four day work week implemented as it was in the experiment did not result in negative or neutral effects. And that's already quite the positive outcome which means more experimentation is mandated as it seems there's hope for four day work week being practical and realistically implemented by companies without hurting their output.
    - econnors 6y ago
      > What we do know here at least is that a four day work week implemented as it was in the experiment did not result in negative or neutral effects. We don't know that, though. Maybe sales would've increase 10x with a 5-day work week and the 4-day week hurt significantly.
      - didibus 6y ago
        I'm saying negative or neutral to absolute growth, not to opportunity. Basically, what would you have said prior to knowing about this experiment if I asked you: "What do you think will happen if we do this experiment to productivity?" I think a lot of people would have said probably you'll see a decrease. But instead we saw a 40% increase. Now I'm assuming Microsoft has YoY data, so I don't know if 40% yearly increase is the norm, above the norm or below and that be interesting to know. But still, this 40% increase is surprising to what I think I would have guessed and assume a lot others would have too, that you'd see a decrease or maybe neutral. So I'm not saying it tells us 4 day work week is better then 5 or 6 or 7. But it seems like a viable model that still allows for quite a bit of productive growth. And that's already a good start for it, one I'm a little surprised about. Cause it means that possibly time worked has minimal impact on productivity, at least within a 1 day margin. It seems other factors might be more important, maybe simply strategic decisions, cutting out of time wastes like useless meetings or discussions, etc.

harikb 6y ago

> In addition to reducing working hours, managers urged staff to cut down on the time they spent in meetings and responding to emails. > They suggested that meetings should last no longer than 30 minutes. Employees were also encouraged to cut down on meetings altogether by using an online messaging app (Microsoft’s, of course). If I am told I am part of an experiment, I would do my best to make it a success and make my 3-day weekend permanent :)

mmcdermott 6y ago
I've wondered about this. In some limited areas, it seems like change helps keep things fresh and people off of autopilot. From that perspective, it's possible that if prolonged the results would level out. And, yes, I say this as someone who would rather have a four day workweek.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  Autopilot is nothing bad. For repeative tasks that cannot be improved with reasonable amount of ressources, you are better off in autopilot. It saves energy for critical times.
MikeTheGreat 6y ago
There's even a name for this: Hawthorne Effect From Wikipedia: "The Hawthorne effect refers to a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect (Yes, the Hawthorne Effect is more general than the specific case here where people want to influence the outcome in a particular way, but it's still cool that this is known to be a thing)
- lupire 6y ago
  That's not the Hawthorne effect, that's people responding to incentives.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]