Author urges employers to overhaul the 9 to 5
Manawatū woman Ellen Ford is promoting a new way to improve productivity and worker happiness by reducing the traditional 9-to-5 work day.
She believes it can be done without reducing salaries and makes this case in her new book, #WorkSchoolHours: A Revolution for Parents, Workplaces and the World.
Ford, of Feilding, is a former army officer who has a master of business administration degree and a PhD and now works as a business speaker and leadership consultant.
In the book she looks at how society created the modern work environment, what it means to work school hours, and how to go about it.
Although she was calling the idea #WorkSchoolHours, putting it into practice didn’t necessarily mean working 9am to 3pm – it was about being flexible, she said.
For people to do their best work and thrive, they needed a sense of belonging, a sense of autonomy and to have purpose, which many working parents were lacking, she said.
“There is a direct correlation between people who are happy and engaged. If they feel they have got belonging, autonomy and purpose, their productivity and performance improves.” The focus should be on output, not hours worked, as happy people made businesses more money, she said.
Many parents felt accepted in the workplace but were asked to leave their personal life at the door, she said. There was also a clash between the hours of school and work. “Our work construct was designed in a time when the worker and the parent were different people ... That’s not life now. Women are in the workforce and also men want to be bigger contributors [at home].”
Ford said it was good for businesses to get to know their employees and what was important in their lives.
She drew on examples from office jobs, but also from factories and shift work, to show how work structures could be changed to achieve more flexibility and better results for the organisations.
One small example she said had made a big difference was a business that changed its morning meeting from 8.30am to 9am, which was easier for working parents dropping their children off at school.
Because there was a talent shortage, organisations had to compete for staff and one way of attracting workers was to offer amazing conditions, she said.
Ford’s personal example of working flexible hours came from a project she was involved with in 2021. She spent months working to bring more than 500 Afghan evacuees to New Zealand after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.
It meant many nights working online with people overseas and team members in New Zealand, she said.
For her work on the #WorkSchoolHours project, Ford has been recognised with a Sir Peter Blake Leadership Award. Ford was also launching two online courses about #WorkSchoolHours, one for parents and one for leaders.