The 20-Hour Work Week of the Future
May 31st, 2007 (4:43am) Dian Schaffhauser 31 CommentsTweet This
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.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
“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.
That is still too much work for me to do………
http://thedailycolumns.wordpress.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
i am able to do any one jobs.now daY I AM WORKING A 7ELEVEN. SO MY COSTOMER SERVICE GOOD AND FRINDLY.
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.