Do meeting-free Fridays work?

This is an interesting article from the Globe and Mail about a pilot project creating Meeting Free Fridays. Just a high level summary: great idea in theory! Gives people time to work uninterrupted on projects on Fridays however those involved in the pilot felt that it was not such as good in practice. No Friday Meetings can slow down the speed of business. The study found people were sneaking off to meet!

When you dig deep, it is important to understand what all of those interviewed echoed - workers need time to think and work without interruptions including email, phone and meetings, even if it is as little as one hour.


KIRA VERMOND
Globe and Mail Update
November 8, 2008 at 6:00 AM EST

‘They're dull. They're too long. Someone always hijacks the conversation. Too many people are invited. And they're not always the right people.”
Ask the average cube monkey to wax poetic on his or her feelings about business meetings, and chances are you'll hear these common complaints plus one more: With so many meetings scheduled, who has time to actually sit down and work any more?
No wonder companies from mammoth IBM to smaller tech firm Ottawa-based Protus have either encouraged or flirted with the concept of Meeting-free Fridays. Still others, such as Xerox and Intel, are doing what they can to offer employees ways to find chunks of uninterrupted time, whether by trying out “quiet time” or e-mail-free hour pilot projects.
“Over all, meetings get a pretty bad rap. So if people knew they had a day without meetings, they would probably be happy,” admits Dee Kelsey, co-author of Great Meetings! Great Results.
Enlarge Image
Elaine Mah at Intel's Toronto-area offices (Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail)
But are workers up to the challenge of going meeting-free, phone-free and e-mail-free even for 60 minutes?
Finding Time
That's exactly what Intel Corp. decided to find out when it launched two pilot projects last year. One involved 300 engineers in the U.S. who were required to adhere to a “quiet time” policy. They had to turn off their e-mail, send messages to voice mail and go meeting-free for a few hours on Tuesday mornings.
“It was really an opportunity to put up the walls around them so they could really sit down and have that uninterrupted span of time for thinking and design,” says Elaine Mah, Canadian business marketing manager for Intel Canada in Toronto who has studied the results. “They could finish a thought from A to Z.”
The pilot was a success, she says. Forty-five per cent of survey respondents found that they had markedly improved productivity. And 71 per cent suggested that Intel consider extending the policy to more employees.
Meanwhile, the other project wasn't nearly as popular. For that one, employees were asked to limit their e-mail use on Fridays. Only 29 per cent claimed they experienced the same degree of increased productivity.
Still, says Ann Gomez, a productivity consultant and president of Clear Concept Inc. in Toronto., avoiding the multitasking monster is important even if that vibrating BlackBerry makes it seem like an impossible task.
“People have the best intentions. They're trying to be available and responsive to their peers, but if we're true to what our jobs are, they require us to be working quietly as well,” she says.
On the sly
But what if employees need to communicate and it happens on a Friday? Tom Johansmeyer, a former management consultant in New York, remembers a chief information officer at a company he once worked for who was concerned about the number of meetings his team was having. He instituted Meeting-free Fridays. The result? The IT team snuck away to meet on the sly.
“We would usually try to find one [meeting room] as far away as we could from the CIO's office so we wouldn't get caught,” he says.
There were other drawbacks, too.
“Nobody could get conference rooms. They were booked solid from Monday to Thursday,” Mr. Johansmeyer says. “You had to make serious plans in advance.”
Eventually the policy got scrapped after six months as more trivial meetings suddenly, suspiciously, became more pressing.
“The definition of ‘urgent' started the change. At first it would be life-or-death on Fridays. Eventually it came to mean life-and-discomfort, then life-and-headache. And finally it just became part of life again,” he says.
No formal announcement of the program's demise was made.
Better meetings
Maybe the problem isn't too many meetings, though. Maybe it's just that too many managers run bad meetings, says Phil Symchych, president of Symchych Consulting Inc., in Regina, Sask.
“They're running away from the problem instead of running to the solution,” he says.
So what makes for a good meeting? Good ones should have a purpose statement, including who is being gathered and for what reason. People should also be clear on what needs to be accomplished during that time and when they leave, have an action plan in hand stating deadlines and who is responsible for each task.
“Look at sports teams. They tend to have good meetings on the sidelines in the huddle. Why? They have a deadline and people measuring the score. Everybody is clear about their roles,” Mr. Symchych says.
What shouldn't managers do? Call a meeting for the sake of calling a meeting, says author Ms. Kelsey.
“Groups lock in meetings. It's the staff meeting every Tuesday or the managers' meeting every Thursday. Nobody stops to say, ‘Do we really need a meeting?'” she says.
Be realistic
But maybe your crew is simply all talked out. Maybe a general communication timeout would make sense. Just take it slowly, advises Ms. Gomez. Start with an hour or two, not an entire day.
“Meeting-free Fridays; I know that's a sexy concept that pulls people in, but meeting-free chunks of time are easier to implement,” she says.
Mr. Symchych agrees, saying hacking off 20 per cent of the workweek for quiet time all in one go might be too ambitious. Besides, like an exercise program, an equal number of smaller chunks of time can work, too.
“You're setting up discipline and a habit. The next thing you know you're getting lots done,” he says.
Special to The Globe and Mail
The Upside:
“We are evolving into a stronger and greater knowledge economy. So if you're thinking for a living, getting that thinking time is so precious.” – Elaine Mah, Canadian business marketing manager for Intel Canada in Toronto
The Downside:
“Immediately after this kind of an announcement, you feel that you've been liberated. You're thinking, ‘Alright! No more meetings on Fridays. I can get some work done and I can get out at a reasonable hour.' But nobody had that feeling. Instead, it was, ‘Oh man. Now we have to cram in all of that stuff into four days.'” – Tom Johansmeyer, a former management consultant in New York

Go Ahead: Lead from Afar

Having a read through Profit Magazine, I came across an interesting article by Kara Aaserud who writes about Managing people remotely. Here is the exert from her work:

Go Ahead: Lead from Afar

As telework gains popularity, it begs the question: How well can Managers lead people from a distance? For "Remote Leadership, Communication Effectiveness and Leader Performance" Derrick Neufeld of the Richard Ivey School for Business in London ON surveyed 41 business leaders and 138 of their remote workers on leadership style, physical distance and communication effectiveness between leaders and followers. The surprise result: "Leaders who communicated effectively, or ineffectively, did so whether they were right in front of the person or a thousand miles away," says Neufeld. "Distance just wasn't a factor."

Telecommuting: Sam Diaz gives us his view

Trying to increase productivity? Send your employees home.

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 10:42 am

Companies that give their workers the option of telecommuting are seeing greater productivity, lower costs, improved employee health and greater employee retention, according to a survey released today by the Computing Technology Industry Association.
Case in point: I’m typing this from this from my own home office setup - a desk out in a corner of the garage where there’s a printer, a phone, some speakers (for my background tunes) and even a small TV with CNN on in the background. I’m still wearing the shorts and T-shirt I threw on this morning when I started the grind of getting the kids off to school. Since then, I’ve gone through my RSS-feed reader, answered a handful of e-mails and started writing this blog entry.
The upside for the boss: I started working as soon as I poured that first cup of coffee and haven’t really stopped since. The upside for me: I didn’t have to fill my tank, scrounge up some lunch money or even iron a shirt. And when the kids get home from school, I’ll be here. There’s no sitter to pay just to watch them do their homework.
Among the findings of the survey:
67 percent of the companies polled said employees were more productive, largely because they spent less time getting to and from work.
59 percent reported seeing cost savings from reduced use of office-related materials and resources.
39 percent said they have access to a more qualified staff, expanding their options to people who are located in - and not willing to relocate from - other regions. Likewise, 37 percent said telecommuting improved employee retention.
25 percent said employee health was improved, largely by reducing stress levels associated with the commute.
Other benefits included promotion of safety through reduced highway use (18 percent) and environmental benefits (17 percent).
Today’s tech tools - things like VPNs, WiFi hotspots, faster broadband connections and online and video conferencing services - have made telecommuting easier. My favorite tool: a virtual phone number from Google’s Grand Central service allows me to give my business contacts one phone number that simultaneously rings my home phone, office phone and cell phone so I never miss a call.
There are some downsides, though. Companies said that their challenges include: securing corporate information systems (53%), limiting use of unauthorized and unsupported devices (38%), and controlling personal use of corporate mobile assets (33%). To meet the challenges, companies have had to upgrade their networks and VPN equipment and expand security, training, and implementation of new virtualization technologies and applications.
For the employees, the biggest downside of being a telecommuter is that idea that you’re never really “off.” More often than not, I’ll give the boss another hour or two of work after dinner or just before bed - which can easily turn a 40-hour week into a 50-hour week. But I don’t mind. For me, giving the company some extra work time is my way of saying thanks for the opportunity to stay off the freeway and be around to watch my kids grow up.

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Thanks Sam! Great Stats!

Would a 4 day work week make your office more green?

Kira Vermond weighs in on the 4 day work week and it's environmental impact.


Weighing the merits of the four-day week

KIRA VERMOND
Globe and Mail Update
September 20, 2008 at 6:00 AM EDT

Thursday is the new Friday. At least it is if you work for one of the growing number of employers offering workers a four-day workweek to help offset long commute times, congestion, pollution and skyrocketing energy costs.
While the majority of trendsetters come from the public sector – Alabama, Utah and Nova Scotia have either implemented programs or are thinking about it – some private companies – have jumped on board the 10-hour day, Monday-to-Thursday bandwagon.
Sure, three-day weekends are nice, but do longer workdays suit older employees or those who have to pick their kids up from daycare by 5:30 p.m. on the button? And while the energy spike's silver lining might be more flexibility on the job, exactly how green is a condensed week anyway?
They want it

At VirTex Assembly Services in Austin, Tex., which made the switch to four days on Sept. 8, 2008, it was actually employees who went to management and proposed the plan, says Brad Heath, the company's president and chief executive officer.
“The increase in gas prices was really putting the pinch on their wallets,” he says before mentioning that the company made sure it asked all employees for their opinion before shutting down the machinery each Friday. “It was only going to work if it worked for everybody. We didn't want somebody to have to leave here because we went to a four-day workweek.”
Employees who need more wiggle room to pick up or drop off young children at school or daycare get 30 minutes of flex time he says. So far that's been enough time.
VirTex employees are hardly alone in wanting a shorter week. It's often listed as the most popular option in surveys. According to a recent Monster.com survey, for instance, 34 per cent of workers favoured a condensed workweek over other gasoline-saving options. By contrast, 19 per cent of workers considered employer reimbursement for gasoline costs the most appealing alternative, and only 7 per cent of workers preferred employer-subsidized public transportation.
How about clients?
While four-day workweeks make sense for the manufacturing sector, it's much more challenging for service-based companies that have to be available for clients' questions. Even on Fridays.
It's for precisely this reason that Babcock & Wilcox Canada in Cambridge, Ont., now runs a condensed week on the manufacturing side, but requires management and other support employees to work at least every other Friday, says Terry Danielczak, the company's manager of staff relations and employment. Beyond customer service, there's another upside too.
“The Fridays that you do work, they're the most productive days because half the population is off that day. It's just amazing how much you get done,” she says. No interruptions from the plant floor either.
LSM Insurance in Markham, Ont., also offers condensed workweeks to its four staff and 25 brokers. It staggers days off so all bases are covered says Lorne Marr, president.
“If a few people are taking advantage of the four-day week, we won't have everyone take off Friday,” he says. “Some have to take the Monday.”
Friday temptation
Having a wide-open Friday is a godsend for some, but for others it offers too much temptation to duck down to the basement home office to check in with work or finish that report. Ms. Danielczak admits it happens to her.
“To be honest, there are many Fridays when you're working at least half days and working from home. You're never totally away from it,” she says.
For others, working the Friday means putting in overtime, without feeling like it's eating into the weekend. And sometimes they end up making more money too.
“Yeah, the brokers are on commission so if they're able to work more hours and be more productive, they're going to do it and bring in more money as well,” Mr. Marr says.
Not so green
No doubt about it, touting the four-day workweek has a certain green appeal, which is not a bad thing from the PR point of view. But does shutting down for one day each week make sense from an environmental standpoint?
Not necessarily, maintains John Putzier, author of Get Weird: 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work. In fact, he's pretty sick of hearing about the green benefits of compressed weeks.
“I just find it annoying because when you cut to the chase, it's not about going green. It's about working less hard and having a three-day weekend. Let's at least be honest about it,” he says.
But is a flexible week such a bad thing? Aren't commuters happy about driving one less day?
“Absolutely. Then they can drive two hours to the shore on Friday.”
And that's the issue, Mr. Putzier says. Just because employees aren't driving into work on Friday doesn't mean they're going car-free all day.
“Listen, unless they're going to be shackled to the kitchen table, they don't run the lawn mower or do anything else that day, it's a wash,” he says.

Linear to Concurrent Decision Making

With the evolution of technology, the decision making process for businesses has moved from a linear decision making process to a concurrent decision making process.

If you think back to the late 90's, email was just coming mainstream. We still used a word processor to write letters to mail or fax. Many people did not have or want voicemail and receptionists and secretaries (now that is an antiquated word!) were the conduit of phone calls and most communication. We travelled to almost every meeting and almost every meeting was face to face.

10 years later, technology has changed the way we communicate as well as on how decisions are made. Linear decisions where information passed back and forth or up and down a chain of command has now been replaced with real time concurrent decision making. Decision makers and influencers can work together to achieve more by talking through their choices and coming to one or more conclusions and essentially moving the peanut forward, FASTER!

As I think back to some of the larger organizations I worked for, email can drive us back to linear decision making as we wait for others to read, digest and act on our correspondence. This can be good and bad. With Blackberries, I could often get a quick ruling back but when the answer or solution was more complicated, a conversation was the better way of coming to a conclusion.

Leveraging technology can accelerate decision making depending on the scenario: Internal vs. Customer Facing, single decision makers vs. a committee etc. All important considerations when choosing a medium to achieve a decision.