It’s Thursday afternoon and the day is going by slower than usual. A fellow colleague and manager walks into my office and say’s “it’s been a week I’ve quit smoking and I just realized how useless breaks are”. Thoughts of putting him in a cobra clutch or figure four cross my mind but I convince myself that his moronic suggestion was the ranting of a nicotine deprived man.He explained that since he quit smoking he realized how much time is spent wasted on needless smoke breaks or breaks in general for that matter. My response “Breaks are useless… Are you kidding me”? So when managers say productivity is up this year, can I assume it’s because 6 people in their division quit smoking? Should we forgo the raises and invest in some nicotine patches? People are not robots and breaks are ingrained in our society from a young age. Ask a child what his favorite class is and 3 out of 5 smart alecs would respond “recess”. The way I see it, if I needed a break back then from coloring and learning my times tables, then surely I need a break today from my ROI analysis.
What’s next? No vacation! We already rank at the bottom of the list amongst Countries who give out and redeem the fewest vacation days. The standard vacation awarded to new employees is 10 working days or two weeks off and the same applies to the U.S. Look on the bright side Countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico have 7 days as their standard, yeeesh! However, consider Countries like Finland, Austria and France where an employee customarily gets 35 vacation days a year. Wow, isn’t that like 7 weeks off? The crazy part is they’re not the only ones. Other Countries who give 5+ weeks of vacation to employees are Spain, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland and Tunisia. I also read that Australia is technically not even required to give any vacation but the norm across the country is 4 weeks for new employees. How do you go from, “technically I don’t owe you any vacation but it’s nice outside" to "take the month off.” Crazy Aussie’s, gotta love 'em.
The even crazier part is that vacation time doesn’t even include the 8-12 public holidays that most countries have. Surprise, its Columbus’s Birthday! Who wants cake? According to FastCompany.com, North Americans work more hours per week and take less vacation time than employees in France but our European friends still produce more GDP per work hour at the end of the year. What! How can the French have a 35 hour work week, triple the vacation time and still be more efficient per hour? I guess it comes down to mental well-being of an employee or what many call a healthy work-life balance. Higher levels of productivity are gained in the short term but when you push someone to their maximum, after a while mental exhaustion kicks in. Motivation is down, lack of focus, turnover the list goes on.
So if you’re a start-up company and can’t afford the high salaries us Gen Y’ers think we deserve (yes I belong to this pool of very talented young minds - there I said it), then use some unconventional ways to attract good talent. Be different and offer your employees a work-life balance package and attract good qualified candidates coming in your door. If you can swing it and your business environment allows it, I highly recommend summer hours. It’s gorgeous outside so reward your employees. We work hard enough during the bleak winter months and we want to play hard when the time comes. We are an incentive and reward based demographic. Maybe my next article will write be about how small start-ups can attract young talent out of school without offering the big base salaries most large corporations can. {w}
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