May 13, 2008
Where I come from there are three types of people who work late:
1) Zealous individuals who take on extra duties knowing that the only way to accomplish the extra tasks is to work beyond the standard business day,
2) People who don't know how to budget thteir time or are slow and/or ineffective at completing their routine responsibilities in the typical time frame.
Due to management's perception that all late workers are of the first type. Combined with a lack of getting into the details of what really goes on, I have seen several cases where inferior employees were treated as "superstars" simply because they worked late. Which leads us to the third type:
3) Mediocre employees who take advantage of this common misperception and spread their work out so that they have to work late which of course, makes them look good.
As everyone knows, when it comes to getting recognized for any achievement, perception is more valuable than reality and it is also always true that working late is more easily recognized than working early. If two people work the exact same number of hours, regardless of who gets more work done, the person seen working late is promoted more frequently (or less likely to be laid off).
It is my opinion that this is a flawed policy and is doomed to failure. Working late in and of itself does not directly increase productivity and may actually cause an employee to get less accomplished. You see, people with a lesser work ethic, if they know they are going to be working late, will simply work slower and take more breaks during the day. The net result being that although they are in the office longer, they are more tired, less efficient, and their real productivity actually decreases.
The obvious benefit of regularly staying late or arriving early is working when there are fewer interuptions. When you are "alone in the office" you are able to really focus on your task without the constant interuptions such as phone calls and random visitors to your desk, your work area is relatively quiet, and you are not subjugated to overhearing the all-too-loud conversations on the latest happenings in pop culture.
Equally obviously, there will be times when you must work late because something came up during the day that trumps your scheduled tasks but your regular tasks still need to be completed on time or an unscheduled item arrives in your queue that cannot be accomplished on time using the typical schedule.
But let's compare arriving in the office an hour early verus staying an hour later:
1- Pre-rush hour traffic in the morning is awesome. For me, the drive time to the office if I leave at 6:30am is 25 minutes. At 8:00am, it is 45minutes At 9:00am it is 35 minutes. Leaving the house at 6:30am nets me 20 minutes per day not spent in traffic. That adds up to 100 minutes per week. Presuming I commute 50 weeks a year, that is 83 hours that I am not stuck in traffic. As much as I like NPR's "Morning Edition", thank you kindly but, I will gladly spend those 2 weeks of my life with my family instead. (Plus it's better for the environment)
2- Fresh minds are more productive than tired minds. An hour of effort in the morning when your mind is fresh will be more productive than an hour spent in the evening when your mind is not as sharp.
So why is there a bias towards rewarding people who work late rather than those who come in early? I think I have the answer and you aren't going to like it.
It's easier.
There, I said it. It is easier for management to see who is working late than it is to see who is coming in early. If I am a manager and I want to know who is showing up for work early, that means I would need to go in early. But, if I'm a typical manager, I am already resigned to the fact that I will be working late almost every day anyway. And, since I'm a late worker (and presumably I think I'm a good worker), then all of the other people who work late must also be good workers, so it probably never even occurs to me to check to see who comes in early.
In the absence of real metrics, it is easy to see why late workers are promoted over early arrivers. But, it should be readily apparant that this is a flawed practice. Better systems need to be used to recognize and reward those emplyees who are the true leaders and not merely slackers taking advantage of a common misperception.