The 20-Hour Work Week of the Future
May 31st, 2007 (4:43am) Dian Schaffhauser 31 Comments
What will your job as a web worker look like in 2015? Yes, it’ll still encompass digital devices, a multitude of communications technologies and social networking. But it may also offer a 20-hour work week, according to Gartner research director Brian Prentice.
In a new report Prentice envisions a world in which a free agent world composed of retiring baby boomers, working-age moms and Gen Xers relinquish traditional work structures in favor of “less-time” roles. This is good news, since those who work part-time are happier than those working full-time — the better to balance work and life among personal, family and community responsibilities.
As the need to employ skilled staff from demographics unable or unwilling to work 40 hours a week increases, Prentice believes the “20-hour-per-week job description” will emerge, describing roles that can be successfully accomplished in half the normal time. Catering to this crowd will help organizations attract and retain the workers they want.
But while we’re all spending less time at work, we’ll be ramping up our use of technology. Eventually, says Prentice, “It will be very hard to draw a distinction between the personal and work computing environment.”
That means power will shift away from companies that do everything they can to control the computing environment and toward those that can figure out how to create policies that provide user autonomy on the technology front.
Has your company already got flex-time figured out? We’d like to hear how it works for you.
31 Comments Post your own comment
The Telecommuterer » 20 Hour Work Weeks says: May 31st, 2007 6:32am
[...] to Gartner as reported by Web Worker Daily, in 10 years it may be common to have a 20 hour work week, and the distinction between personal and work computing environments will be very [...]
GigaOM What's on GigaNET « says: May 31st, 2007 8:53am
[...] by Om Malik Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 8:52 AM PT | No comments The 20-Hour Work Week of the Future: What will your job as a web worker look like in 2015? A new report envisions a world in which a [...]
20 Hour Work Week by 2015 says: May 31st, 2007 9:03am
[...] Web Worker Daily talks about a Prentice report which talks about an interesting possibility for the future employee. The quality of life will become a greater aspect of how people approach employment and work. Using latest technologies, tele-commuting to work and working for less hours more productively - 20 hours per week. For a long time, people have been conjecturing about the benefits of working in your pajyamas in a virtual office and just getting things done. But, to put it in perspective of hours and minutes, I find it fascinating to know how HR will deal with possibly more number of workers putting in lesser hours but more productive ones. [...]
Feed Snap 5.31.07 (1) « EMONOME says: May 31st, 2007 10:41am
[...] WWD: The 20-hr Work Week of the Future [...]
Alan Weinkrantz says: May 31st, 2007 12:06pm
I am a 54 year old male. Single parent. Run a PR firm. I live in San Antonio. Girl friend in Dallas. I travel. I play. I work my ass off. I dont see the notion of a 20 hour week. You can’t turn work off and then turn it on when you reach the 20 hour limit. Most of us dont work by the “hour.”
We do projects, engagements, on-going things. Sure, I don’t work like I used to and take time off during the day to run errands, have lunch with a friend, pick my daughter up from school, or just chill out.
These devices keep us connected and frees us up to do other things, while we still stay connected.
I could see scaling back “some” as I get older, but the notion of just a 20 hour work week is just plain dumb. Reality and connected devices dont work that way.
The other thing is that I personally see as what I do as a hobby. I really enjoy my work. I get to work and exchange money with very smart and interesting people. I want remain engaged with smart and interesting people. Sometimes the money flows to them. Sometimes to me.
Maybe I am too lucky. Work is stimulating, fun, and provides me and my family with a nice life.
Pete Johnson, Nerd Guru says: May 31st, 2007 12:45pm
I don’t know if anybody else regularly reads Penelope Trunk (Boston Globe columnist, Yahoo! Business columnist, blogger, and author of The Brazen Careerist), but a big theme she stresses is that Gen X and Gen Y workers value time spent doing things that make you happy over money.
Coincidentally, her blog article today features some new financial data that found that men in their 30s make less than their parents. Penelope’s explanation for this is along the same lines as part of this argument for more part time work.
—Pete
http://nerdguru.net
Brian Lund says: May 31st, 2007 1:54pm
So the job entails a 20 hour work week, but will WWers fill their plate up with two or three such assignments? My dad fondly recalls hearing of the 30 hour work week that computers were supposed to usher in. That was in the 70’s, but the promise still hasn’t come true.
Anne Zelenka says: May 31st, 2007 2:33pm
Hi Pete: yes, Penelope is one of my favorite career bloggers. I saw that article too and noted how it dovetailed with the ideas here.
I see Alan’s point too though. I work more than 40 hours a week. I work every moment I can — partly because I love it, partly because I need the money to maintain my lifestyle. I’ve learned that money can buy you happiness… money can buy you time later on (for retirement, for a midcareer change, for doing work that you love but that doesn’t pay very well).
I’m not interested in a 20 hour week right now, but someday I will be. It sure would be nice if laws and employers would get out of the mindset that the 40-hour workweek plus health benefits is the only kind of job worth anything.
psipsina says: May 31st, 2007 2:33pm
Heh. Weren’t they telling us in the 70s that by the year 2000 we’d all be hardly working at all? It was a load of BS then, and I suspect it’s a load of BS now?
Doug K says: May 31st, 2007 3:10pm
“As the need to employ skilled staff from demographics unable or unwilling to work 40 hours a week increases”
where will this need come from ? I really can’t see it, in an outsourced world.
Certainly there is no way to work a 20-hour week in tech currently: employers aren’t willing to provide half-time jobs; you can’t be self-employed on 20 hours a week, that’s barely enough to market your services and find work, never mind do any actual paid work. Believe me I’ve tried.
The US has longer working hours and less vacation than any other country. The trend is toward 50+ hour work weeks, not to 20 hours.
20 Hour Workweek for Telecommuters : Joberu says: May 31st, 2007 3:45pm
[...] Worker Daily is covering a fantastic piece of research indicating that telecommuters may only need to work 20 hours a week in the future. That is [...]
aniche says: May 31st, 2007 7:15pm
That is still too much work for me to do………
http://thedailycolumns.wordpress.com
Steve Atkinson says: May 31st, 2007 7:16pm
The mostly likely outcome of a 20 hour work week, if it even happens, is for people to have 2 or 3 20 hour work week jobs. Jobs that may take 30-40 hours to do the work for the pay of 20.
The only one who would enjoy a 20 hour work week are those who already have retired with a retirement income and just looking for a part time job.
Bootstrapper » Maybe a Part-Time Online Work Week? says: May 31st, 2007 10:00pm
[...] from that though, I can almost fathom living a 20-hour work week. And if I can actually break through my workaholic nature, I know exactly how I’d spend the [...]
ericnakagawa says: June 1st, 2007 12:01am
I have to disagree with this … I think that you may be “officially” working less, but as “work and play” blurs you’ll be “officiall working less” but overall “working” MORE. I’m thinking that once people become part of the Global-24/7 workforce we will in fact put in over 80 hours a week “officially working” and “working for fun”.
Sites I run and moderate take up roughly 30-40 hours a week of “play-work”, and I have a FT job of 40-50 hours a week of “official work”. Plus, I freelance on the side. Passive income, residual income, referrals, ad revenue, merchandising… it still requires work, time, and persistence.
All in all, I like the notion that we will work less, but let’s be honest, here. We will continue to work even more until we are working 24/7. It shall just become harder and hard to distinguish between work/play and life overall.
I think we need to stop these thoughts about doing nothing and making tons of money. It takes work, period.
The New Basement Tapes » Blog Archive » The 20-Hour Work Week of the Future says: June 1st, 2007 3:34am
[...] Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive The 20-Hour Work Week of the Future « Comments (0) [...]
Art Is Resistance says: June 1st, 2007 6:53am
I agree with most of the ‘you can’t just switch off posts’. Many jobs, such as teaching, follow you home in the form of paper work, planning and research.
Others require you to be plugged in all the time and aleart to new things, such as a journalism, pr, cop, doctor, etc. etc.
good to know Clock Watchers vs. Craftspeople - Which Are You? « says: June 1st, 2007 7:27am
[...] Ahh, to work-less and have more time to enjoy life… nice idea. Web Worker Daily has a post today discussing a new report from Gartner’s Brian Prentice on the coming 20-hour work [...]
phampants says: June 1st, 2007 8:03am
The Archdiocese of Chicago consideration of a “full work week” has been 35 hours for over 7 years now. We get everything done in 35 hours instead of 40 w/o any extra stress or crunch of time.
20 hours may be a stretch, but I can see it becoming 30 by 2015.
Fight the power. Down with robots. - 10,000 Marshmallows - Marketing Accountability: How to eat 10,000 Marshmallows says: June 1st, 2007 3:21pm
[...] with all the talk these days about 20-hour (or even 4-hour) work weeks, and all the gizmos and gadgets you can use to automate what used to be [...]
Claude says: June 1st, 2007 4:42pm
That study is nothing more than the same old attempt to try to make America be more like Old-Europe.
Europeans don’t work 35 hours because they value their family/vacation time more than we do, but because of bureaucrats trying to hide the fact their economies are not growing, so they legislate shorter work weeks in order to force companies to hire more people.
Hard work is the main reason why a young country like ours has become so successful.
Resource Blogs NDTVjobs.com » The 20-Hour Work Week of the Future says: June 1st, 2007 11:15pm
[...] Read More at Web Worker Daily [...]
jansenma says: June 3rd, 2007 6:54pm
I’m in generation Y and this is exactly the sort of work week I continue to look for. The people I interact with at work from the more mature generations generally think I’m one screw too loose (and those same people spend 60-70 hours per week accomplishing the same tasks I do in under 40).
I’ve pushed for change at my company, for example allowing employees to work from home two days a week. That would save money on gas and time on the commute, and there would still be three days available for face time in the office. There just seems to be a disconnect there where more experienced generations seem to think that work only can happen rooted in a chair in a cubicle farm.
Those generations also seem to associate a great deal of their identity with their job, and I consider it to be one slice of my life that doesn’t greatly affect my overall identity. In other words, if I lost my job, I’d find another — no big deal.
-Matt
http://metaviper.com
Daily itzblogging big Links 2007-06-05 - itzblogging big - Serving the Unserved – Recruiters, Job Seekers, Quiet Working Professionals says: June 5th, 2007 8:25am
[...] Web Worker Daily : The 20-Hour Work Week of the Future “What will your job as a web worker look like in 2015? Yes, it’ll still encompass digital devices, a multitude of communications technologies and social networking. But it may also offer a 20-hour work week, according to Gartner research director Brian Prentice.” [...]
Les Brown says: June 15th, 2007 12:40pm
I’ve been reading Your Money or Your Life and it says that, prior to the Industrial Revolution & Great Depression, a 40 hour work week was unheard of. These days of course, people have known nothing else. As for Matt, the gen Y’er - you’re spot on. I’ll go you one better. The “more mature” think just being in the chair is equal to work being done.
Dean Landolt » Blog Archive » The 20 hour workweek? says: July 13th, 2007 12:06pm
[...] [via WWD] [...]
Jean says: August 18th, 2007 3:03pm
I have been in favor of a shorter workweek for many years. It’s really hard to get much leisure time when you are working 5 days a week, 8 hours per day, and you are up at 5 or 6 am and not home until 6 or 7 pm (this is a 12 hour day or more). You’ve got to have a day off for running errands, and who wants to run them on Saturday, leaving yourself with only one day off…Sunday?
Eric Dick says: November 26th, 2007 7:22pm
I read some of these comments and I really think that most of you have been thoroughly brainwashed by the corporate system. Who says you can’t work 20 hours a week and make a boatload of $$. Why not? Put in the hours and build yourself a money machine. I am doing it, and I am a knucklehead.
parmjeet singh says: July 18th, 2008 3:03am
i am able to do any one jobs.now daY I AM WORKING A 7ELEVEN. SO MY COSTOMER SERVICE GOOD AND FRINDLY.
Suzanne says: August 29th, 2008 7:24pm
I’m in agreement with Matt, Les, and Eric!
The “old school” need to change their way of thinking.
I’m a single mother of 3 children who has the luxury of working a few hours per day from home. The rest of my time is spent enjoying life and watching my children grow.
Once the baby boomers retire, it will leave much room for the fresh minds of technology driven people to slowly change the way business is conducted.
WebWorkerDaily » Archive Stalking the Ideal Work Week « says: September 4th, 2008 7:38am
[...] looked (somewhat skeptically) at the 4-hour work week, considered predictions of the coming 20-hour work week, and heard from real world web workers who revel in 60- and 70-hour work weeks. Now, there’s [...]