Working 9-5 Is it a way to make a living?
Flexitime is not just the preserve of mothers seeking family balance. Alanah Eriksen talks to those redefining the working week
He heads a team of 14 at one of the country’s busy trusts companies. Work on Auckland’s Queen St is about 19km from his West Harbour home, which, in peak-hour traffic, can take more than an hour each way.
But Willem van der Steen is able to pick up his son Alex from school by
3.15pm most days and by 4pm you might find them on the water, or exploring nature. And he often gets to take long weekends.
Working 9 to 5, it’s no way to make a living for the 44-year-old.
The old 40-hour, five-day-a-week routine is, if not dead and buried, then at least fast falling out of favour.
Van der Steen is the head of digital at Perpetual Guardian, which on Thursday will officially introduce its four-day working week after a sixmonth trial. Staff can take an extra day off, or work shorter days to meet threshold for the new 32-hour week.
Van der Steen tries to be in the office by 8am and leave before 3pm. He takes an hour for lunch so works abut six hours a day. Or, if he wants to go away with his partner and son, he will work eight hours a day and take Friday off.
The company’s hours were previously structured from
8.30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Van der Steen’s partner Cynthia is a primary school teacher and isn’t able to leave work before 5pm. Before his new hours, the couple relied on after-school programmes, or Grandma, who lives nearby, to take care of Alex.
“I don’t have to stress with the traffic,” he says.
“If I end up doing some work from home, it’s okay, because I am home. I’ve got the little one around, I can play with him.
“You can go out of Auckland for a long weekend, go to the beach, go to the Waitakere Ranges, go for a nature walk, kayak around Herald Island.”
All van der Steen’s team have opted into the reduced work week.
“Before, you’d check the news headlines, check Facebook,” he says.
“We’re still getting work done, it’s just much more focused.
“My team is very efficient in six hours. The first two weeks were weird. But now the meetings are shorter — we have 45-minute standups, everything is just a little bit faster.
“The lazy questions are gone. It’s more actionable requests.”
There is no punishment if staff are not completing their work within the
32 hours, but a conversation about what’s stopping them achieving it is had, van der Steen says.
He is still contactable out of hours but staff are more wary about bugging colleagues. “If they need you, they can text, call or email but there’s an agreement that it’s only if there is an emergency, not just for chit-chatty stuff. People have to think about what they are asking you and whether it can wait.”
The Dutch native has lived in New Zealand for two years and says companies in the Netherlands offered reduced hours, but you had to take reduced pay.
THE TRIAL for Perpetual Guardian’s reduced work week was started by director Andrew Barnes in March to see what impact it would have on productivity levels at the business. Employees who opted in were eligible for a weekly rest day provided they met their weekly productivity objectives. They were paid their usual salary.
The initial test was a success, with independent academic research showing productivity levels remaining intact and job satisfaction improving markedly among staff members.
Since the venture, about 15 Kiwi businesses and 35 from around the globe have been in touch with the company keen to learn more about the idea, says a spokeswoman.
“Most of these businesses have been researching how to implement a similar form of flexible working structure into their own businesses.”
One is an all-female New Plymouth law firm aiming to trial a four-day week in February.
Legal Solutions has 14 staff and at six years old is a new business prepared to do things a bit differently, says director Cara Gelston.
“I don’t know whether it is because we are all girls but we are a flexible workplace already. It has worked well so far and we are looking at taking the next step.”
She says it is important that it is understood that it is not a gift. Gelston hopes it will improve productivity that is already good while letting staff spend more time with family and to enjoy Taranaki’s outdoors.
Staff have just learned of the plan but were “excited and a little perplexed about how it will work”.
Perpetual Guardian is producing a white paper next month detailing what it learned from its trial and what it has done to be able to achieve the move. It has received more than 120 requests for a copy, including from 23 New Zealand businesses.
IT HAS been 178 years since Londonborn Wellington carpenter Samuel Parnell refused to work more than eight hours a day, sparking a wider movement in New Zealand (he informed other workmen arriving on incoming ships of the local custom). Fifty years later, the country’s first Labour Day was observed and has been since. The latest, this week.
Parnell’s response when asked by a a shipping agent to build a store has entered New Zealand folklore: “There are twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves.
“I am ready to start to-morrow morning at eight o’clock, but it must be on these terms or none at all.”
Parnell was on to something, but maybe it’s time to take his idea further. Though the broad perception may be that flexible hours are the preserve of mothers with childcare responsibilities, this is quite far from the reality.
Research by Timewise, a UK company which advertises part-time and flexible roles, found childcare was not the most common reason given for working flexibly or choosing parttime work. Only 35 per cent of parttimers who would prefer to continue working part-time cite caring responsibilities as their reason, compared to 36 per cent citing general convenience, 40 per cent wanting to enjoy leisure time or study and 48 per cent looking for the catchall “work/life balance”.
New Zealand’s employment legislation doesn’t define what full-time or part-time work is, but full-time work is often considered to be around 35 to 40 hours a week.
For statistical purposes, Statistics New Zealand defines full-time as working 30 hours or more per week. It says there are 546,600 part-time workers in New Zealand and 2.02 million fulltimers.
An analysis last year showed
400,000 of the part-timers didn’t want to take on any more hours.
A search on Trade Me jobs this week found 3142 listings using the keyword “flexible”, 1200 of them in Auckland.
As well as flexible hours, more New Zealand companies are offering support for staff who have children, including one-off payments for primary carers when they go on maternity leave, and additional time off to the Government’s 22 weeks — which went up on July 1 from 18 weeks with a maximum wage of $538.55 a week.
Flexible locations are also on the rise.
The Straker Group, a tech company based on Auckland’s North Shore, has fielded several inquiries from jobhunters since the Herald on Sunday reported its move to Gisborne last week. The company had asked its
38 New Zealand employees whether they wanted the office moved into the city centre, so more of the city was available to younger staff struggling to buy their first home in the inflated property market.
Staff wanted them to go further. So in June, company founders Merryn and Grant Straker opened an office in Gisborne. Nine staff have moved with a further 11 likely to join in the coming year.
Zany offices are also keeping 21st century workers engaged.
At Google’s New Zealand headquarters, on the 27th floor of downtown Auckland’s PwC tower, the main office has beach umbrellas, a bach-style side room for meetings, and quirky decor typical of the company’s offices.
The global tech company is widely regarded as having some of the best offices in the world, including secret rooms in an Ontario building, an indoor basketball court in Zurich, slides and games rooms, rooftop mini-golf or in-house masseuses.
THE PREFERENCE for flexible working is strong among men and women, says Timewise, with the vast majority (84 per cent) of male full-time workers working flexibly or saying they want to, compared to 91 per cent of female full-time workers.
More conversations about how to work flexibly, rather than why, are needed, argues co-founder Karen Mattison. “The whole link between the reason for working flexibly being children or caring responsibilities has held back the discussion about flexible working.
“We haven’t talked enough about how we make it work but [have been] focusing on why, and actually the much more interesting and valuable conversation is how do we make it work when four people in a team do three days a week, three people do four days, and two people work from home?” The reasons for wanting to do things differently should ultimately not even be relevant, she suggests.
“We don’t believe there’s [any such thing as] a ‘good’ or ‘special’ reason. The direction of travel should be towards reason-neutral.”