The 40-hour work week has always been trending in most of the workplaces for a long time. But, in the past decades, the world has changed a lot, especially after the spread of coronavirus, the working trends and norms have transformed.  40-hour work week is getting non-functional in most of the firms these days. But the question is, what will be the best replacement for this traditional working pattern?

Before searching for substitutes of 40-hour work week, have you ever thought about what a 40-hour work week model is? Why it is considered a standard for a professional since long ago? Where did this concept originate? What of its features is making it redundant in the firms now?

Let’s have a quick overview of the facts about 40-hour work week.

What is a 40-hour work week?

The 40-hour work week is measured as the standard amount of time an employee has to work for its corporation in a week.

Background of 40-hour work week

The 40-hour work week is fixed as a working standard for employees in 19^th century.

• In 1817, the labor unions united to demand reforms in employment conditions because people worked 80 to 100 hours per week for their organizations.
• In 1866, the National Labor Union filed a petition to Congress for the eight-hours workday as a law. As the Congress didn’t agree for this law, it moved more people to support the labor reforms.
• In 1869, President Ulysses S. announced an eight-hour workday for the government employees, which encouraged the private sector employees to demand the same rights.
• In 1886, the Illinois Legislature passed a law for eight-hour workdays for this year only. But, a massive crowd of employees refused this law and held a strike in Chicago. A bomb exploded on this crowd, and 12 people were killed. It resulted in Haymarket Riot and is now observed as a public holiday for ‘May Day’ on 1^st of May every year.
• In 1926, Henry Ford introduced the 40-hour work week. After research, he concluded that working more than 40 hours per week has less impact on productivity.
• In 1938, a revolutionary law was passed by Congress, known as the Fair Labor Standards Act, stating that all the employees who work for more than 44 hours will be paid overtime for their work. After two years, they amended the act to reduce the work week up to 40 hours.
• In 1940, the 40-hour work week became a permanent part of U.S. law.

Productivity of 40-hour work week

The productivity of 40-hour work week model depends on an employee’s capabilities. Most companies standardize the 40-hour work week model as eight-hour workdays, five days per week for all the employees. But is this rule effective for each employee?

Each person has their way of working. Besides it, many other factors like a person’s life stressors, his skill level make it difficult to set the same productivity level for all employees. To know the effectiveness of a 40-hour work week, we must understand how an employee utilizes those eight hours per day in the workplace. Let’s have a rundown of some facts and figures on it.

• According to a recent survey from AtTask, this is how the employees spend their eight-hour per day at work:
• 45% of the time is consumed in primary job duties.
• 40% of it is passed in meetings, administrative tasks and ‘other interruptions.’
• 14% of it is spent on E-mails.

• Christopher Barnes, an associate professor at the University of Washington, says that an average worker is productive only for almost three hours a day.

A study of 2,000 full-time employees authenticates this research. It shows that out of 8 hours, i.e. 480 minutes of work, an employee is productive for less than half of this time for the office work, and the rest of the time is passed in following the activities.

• 60 to 65 minutes in reading news websites.
• 44 minutes on social media.
• 40 minutes in gossiping with coworkers.
• 26 minutes in searching a new job.
• 23 minutes for smoking breaks.
• 18 minutes on phone calls to friends or partners.
• 17 minutes while making hot drinks.
• 14 minutes in messaging.
• 8 minutes in snacking.
• 7 minutes on food preparation at the office.

These statistics show that most employees do not achieve 100% productivity in a 40- hour work week at their workplace. But, a few diversions help in the refreshing of mind, which increases an employee’s focus. The creativity level of employees is also enhanced by increasing the workplace wellbeing and making it a better place for employees to work.

Case study supporting 40 – hour work week strategy

A New Zealand based financial services company, Perpetual Guardians, claims a 20% improvement in their throughput after applying a 40 – hour work week. They said that more companies should stick to it to see a surprising increase in their company’s efficiency and staff and improvement in their wider community. After implementing the 40 – hour work week, the employees’ stress level is decreased by 7% and it also helped increase the employee well-being.

Another case study on an American company shows the following results for the productivity of 40-hour work week.

It shows that the company achieved its maximum throughput when the employees worked eight hours a day, five days per week.

Pros of 40- hour work week

• It reduces the stress on an employee due to fixed working hours.
• Reduction in work time contributes to higher productivity.
• Employees will work in a more relaxed environment resulting in the timelier deliveries of the projects.
• The commute cost is saved.

Cons of 40 – hour work week

• The advent of technology is making this hour system non-functional for many industries.
• These fixed short time slots lead to low-quality work when there is more work in a short span.
• It discourages teamwork as each employee wants to work alone according to their comfort zone and does not want to work with coworkers.
• As ladies are also into workplaces these days, so if both the partners are working according to 40 – hour work week, they may have less family time, leading to clashes in the relationships.

Alternatives to 40 hours work week

As virtual machines and technology have taken over the world, we should move on to a new and improved workplace strategy. Some of these strategies that can replace 40-hour work week are as follows:

·      Flextime

It provides the employees with the option of designing their own work schedules, ensuring that they are present in the official meetings and activities.

·      Telework

Telework is a better option for employees who don’t want to work a regular 40-hour week. It allows the employees to work one to five days a week from home or anywhere remotely.

·      Compressed work week

A compressed work week consists of four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days. It benefits the employees to save one extra day from work. It also helps them to save income by lowering their commute costs.

·      32-hour work week

This strategy allows the employees to work for eight hours each day for four days a week while still having their full salaries. This approach accelerates business productivity while enhancing the employees’ competencies.

Conclusion

In the recent era, companies are experimenting with more standard workplace structures to increase the efficiency of their businesses.  HR Consultancy firms suggest increasing employee engagement to improve organizational effectiveness, so it’s not just about being flexible in working hours.  At the end of the day, it is all about aligning the values of the employees with the company’s needs and requirements.

Kazakhstan is still a relatively young country, about to celebrate 30 years of independence in December, but it has already established a successful innovation ecosystem with the support of government Ministries and often as a result of its First President’s initiatives.  There is no doubt it has the advantage of learning from the best practice of other countries and when you visit its capital, Nur-Sultan, you soon become aware of the scale of its development and ambition for the future.  It is most definitely a country that a UK start-up should have on its radar either as part of its international expansion plans or in terms of the interesting start-ups to be found. Here we take a look at some of the key players.

The Astana Hub which was launched by the First President in 2018 is the largest technopark for IT start-ups in Central Asia.  Its aim is to develop a start-up culture, supporting high-tech projects to strengthen Kazakhstan’s economy.  With various arms it includes a hub space as a corporate business incubator aimed at the development of IT projects.  As of October 2021, Astana Hub includes 555 companies, 54 of which are foreign.  The Astana Hub works and cooperates with local venture funds including QAZTECH Ventures, Quest Ventures, Most Ventures and Qazangels Business Angels Network.  It also cooperates with international organisations including Rutec Ventures and Unbound Innovations both in the UK.

Another initiative of the First President is the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), which was launched in 2018, is the newest financial centre in the world and the only one in Central Asia.  It has its own law, based on English law, and its own court and arbitrage.  There are 1,000 companies registered at AIFC from more than 50 countries, including some from the UK, and its particular areas of interest are in Islamic finance, fintech and green finance.  The AIFC Green Finance Centre was created to enable the development of green finance in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Green finance refers to investments and other financial instruments such as green and social bonds, concessional lending and subsidies for green projects, which are aimed at delivering environmentally friendly, energy efficient and low carbon projects.   As a regional think-tank, the AIFC Green Finance Centre also provides strategic and business consulting in green finance and sustainable development.  It established the first Green Finance Awards in the region and the Green Finance team from AIFC recently held a COP26 event in Glasgow.

Also to be found within the AIFC family is the Tech Hub which helps brings new tech initiatives to Kazakhstan, soft lands them and then builds up new economy streams for the country by building the tech development stream and ecosystem to support these companies and “connecting the dots” with the different Ministries.  There is currently a strong focus on b2b tech including fintech, such as Kaspi which is already known outside Kazakhstan, and b2gov or govtech companies. 

Land-linked not land-locked

One of the attractions of Kazakhstan must surely be its country neighbours and location, which sees for example the Baikonur cosmodrome based in Southern Kazakhstan which is leased to Russia, and there is also a strong presence from Chinese banks as well as the EBRD and Eurasia Bank.   President Shigeo Katsu of Nazarbayev University has a very good description of the country “not as land-locked but as land-linked”.

Without doubt, the University is one of the institutions turning out an educated graduate base to fill the growing employment opportunities in the country.  Nazarbayev University which is also known for its Nazarbayev University Research and Innovtion System (NURIS) focused on high-tech business creation and includes an incubator and business accelerator, offering a 12 week programme and potential investment.  Since 2016, the Cluster has supported 157 start-ups and provided $1m in grants.  It has staged over 3,000 events, 80 hackathons and has future plans for an Astana Business Campus Science Park. 

In summary, Kazakhstan is worth a look – perhaps precisely because it is not yet that well known outside Central Asia in terms of its start-up and entrepreneurial ecosystem.  Air Astana, which is an extremely successful business with two shareholders the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and BAE Systems PLC operates direct flights from London, won the Skytrax Best Airline in Central Asia Award 2021 and flies to 45 domestic and international destinations.  Peter Foster, Air Astana’s President describes Kazakhstan as “an emerging market with some challenges but it is open for business and very anglophile.  You have to be all in in Kazakhstan otherwise you’re not in at all.”

A team is not only a group of people put together to work on a project, it’s important to make sure the team members work together so the whole team can be more effective, efficient, and productive in achieving its goals. 

However, building a cohesive team is often a tricky task. While work team building activities can certainly be effective, relying on overused activities can be counterproductive, leading to team members feeling demoralized and even embarrassed due to the cliché. 

Every team is unique, and every team member is also unique, so it’s crucial to choose work team building activities that are the right fit for your team’s specific needs and preferences.

In this guide, we will discuss how. 

Benefits of Work team Building Activities

1. Building camaraderie and cohesiveness

A very common issue in teamwork is the lack of or poor communication between different team members. Your team members may come from different backgrounds, and for remote employees, language and cultural barriers can also be an issue.

When implemented properly, team building activities can help break down barriers, build camaraderie, and develop communication skills in individual employees. Various team building activities are designed for team members to learn more about one another, which can be crucial in the long run. 

2. Repair broken relationships and strengthen healthy ones

Workplace relationships are always dynamic and are prone to conflicts. 

Again, your team may consist of people with different working styles, personalities, and priorities, so team building activities can be a great way to break down barriers, repair conflicts, and strengthen already-working relationships. 

Team members with better relationships are more likely to collaborate with each other and help each other in achieving collective goals.

3. Better customer service

Happy and satisfied employees are more likely to provide better services to customers and/or make better contributions in delivering a better product, which in turn will lead to better customer service. 

4. Improved productivity

When your team members work together as a cohesive team, they’ll naturally be able to accomplish more than the sum of their individual efforts. When implemented correctly, work team-building activities can help facilitate cooperation and collaboration in your team. 

Work Team Building Activities: Best Practices

As discussed, work team building activities are only effective when they are done right. If not, they can be counterproductive and may discourage and demoralize your team instead. 

With that being said, here are some best practices to follow: 

Know your goals ASAP

What is the purpose of the work team building exercise? 

You are going to use your employees’ valuable time for these activities, so it’s important to make sure they are purpose-driven. Don’t do team building activities just for the sake of having some fun or taking a break, but these activities should be designed to solve clear business challenges: resolving conflicts within a team, onboarding a new employee, and so on. 

Know your participants

Different team members may have different preferences and needs: some may be more ongoing in nature, but some may be more introverted.

Choose an activity that is inclusive for all participants so everyone can actively participate. For example, if there are some of your employees with physical disabilities, avoid activities that are physically challenging. 

In general, work team building activities should be challenging enough to engage the participants, but they shouldn’t potentially leave out, or worse, humiliate participants. 

Time it well

As a general rule of thumb, the work team building activities should not take your employees’ valuable time so they have to compensate with extra hours, also, they should occur during normal business hours.

Monitor your employees’ workloads, and plan the event during the least busy time in your schedule. Revise deadlines and invest in temporary staff if necessary to maximize participation. 

Also, check vacation schedules, so the team building activity doesn’t happen when too many members of your team are on their day-offs. 

Monitor and evaluate

Monitor the execution of the activities, and evaluate how your team performs after the activity is over. Check whether there are any positive reinforcements in your team’s or individual employee’s performance based on the objective(s) of the activity. 

Collect feedback from participants so you can gather valuable insights about the activity and your team’s thoughts about it. 

Evaluate whether the team building activity has a lasting effect in weeks and even months after the activity, and assess what’s working (and what’s not) so you can design your future activities better. 

Encourage collaboration

Many work team building activities are competitive in nature, but it’s crucial to remind participants that these activities are designed to improve teamwork and collaboration, and they shouldn’t focus on winning the competition alone. 

To tackle this issue, it’s generally better to choose activities that encourage participants to work together in teams to solve a problem. Or, if it’s a competitive activity, break down participants into teams so they’ll still need to collaborate with their designated team.

Go offsite when you can

If possible, organize the team building activities offsite so your team can “escape” the confines of your office. A new environment may encourage participants to more freely communicate and share with others. This doesn’t have to be too complex: go to the nearest park (for outdoor activities), and you can book an offsite meeting space for indoor activities. 

Consistency is key

When an activity brings positive results, you may want to plan it as a regular event. Consistency is key if you want your activities to produce lasting effects. However, don’t conduct the activity too often, or your employees might get bored with it. 

Closing Thoughts

Whatever the work team building activities you plan, ideas won’t really matter without the right execution, and this is why it’s crucial to have Eventtia to help you plan, manage, and seamlessly implement the work team building activities with ease. With Eventtia, you can effectively plan your event, monitor and track participants’ participation during the activities, and more. 

By following the tips and guidelines we’ve shared above, you are now ready to plan an effective work team building activities program for your team to improve their morale, cohesiveness, and ultimately, productivity. 

All businesses deal with business workflows. 

Some might involve only one straightforward workflow, but other businesses might apply intricate, interconnected workflows in their day-to-day operations. 

Nevertheless, how efficient these business workflows are will directly dictate how productive and profitable a business will be. All workflows will always have some form of inefficiencies, and some may severely impact business performance. 

Thus, managing and optimizing business workflows is very important if you want to improve your organization’s productivity and efficiency. 

Trying to find ways to optimize your workflows but don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place. Here, we will discuss all you need to know about optimizing business workflows, and let us begin right away. 

What are Business Workflows?

A business workflow is a set of tasks, typically sequential, that, when completed, will accomplish a specific business objective. 

These sequential tasks will either: 

1. Process raw data into a processed format, or
2. Process raw materials into a finalized product

The term “business workflow” is often used interchangeably with “business process,” but although they are indeed related, they aren’t the same. 

To explain this, we have to understand that there are three different types of business workflows: 

1. Process: when the workflow is repeatable with predictable steps, it is a process. In a restaurant business, cooking the signature dish is a process. 
2. Project: the workflow has predictable steps but is non-repeatable. With the same restaurant example, renovating the restaurant’s interior is a project. 
3. Case: the workflow’s steps aren’t predictable, although the workflow can be repeatable. Again, with the restaurant example, taking a customer’s order is a case; the steps will only reveal themselves when you get more information about the order from the customer.

When discussing business workflow optimization, typically, we refer to optimizing a business process, but we can also apply the same principles to optimizing a project management workflow. 

The Benefits of Optimizing Business Workflows

Now that we’ve learned about the concept of workflows, as well as the different types of business workflows available, why do we need to optimize business workflows in the first place? 

Here are the top benefits of identifying, mapping, analyzing, and ultimately, optimizing business workflows: 

1. Improved efficiency and productivity

An organization’s efficiency is dictated by how efficiently its workflows are executed. 

Workflow analysis as a core aspect of optimizing business workflows is performed continuously to identify bottlenecks and redundant tasks that add no value, allowing the organization to eliminate these efficiencies. 

By ensuring important workflows and documented (mapped) and optimized, we can improve each of these business workflows’ efficiency, which in turn will improve the organization’s overall productivity and efficiency. 

2. Standardized workflows to eliminate errors

Before we can optimize the workflow, a workflow must be mapped and documented into an accurate workflow diagram. 

This workflow diagram will provide a standardized roadmap for all stakeholders involved in the workflow, so they can all have the same vision on how to execute the workflow. This will help in eliminating confusion and reducing the risks of errors. 

Accurate workflow documentation can also help to identify errors as quickly as possible, and when errors occur, they can be more easily traced back to the source. 

3. Reduced micromanagement

It’s no secret that micromanagement can be destructive both for the manager, the managed, and the company as a whole.

Optimized business workflows effectively eliminate the need for micromanagement since the workflow documentation will allow managers to accurately map all the tasks and steps required to execute the workflow, educating the employees about their specific duties. So, employees can effectively execute the task accurately without needing to be manually instructed by the managers each time. 

4. Data accessibility control

It’s common for organizational tasks to require employees to gain access to confidential data and information before they can do their job. However, it’s also crucial for the organization to only provide access to confidential and sensitive information when it is absolutely required. Not only giving access to unnecessary information can add vulnerability to the confidential data, but it can also cause additional delays and confusion.

By mapping and optimizing business workflows, we can know for sure who is responsible for which task and which information is required by different stakeholders. Thus, data accessibility control will be much easier to manage. When data is required for a specific task, we can give access quickly, and similarly, we can revoke access to unnecessary data as quickly as possible to avoid additional risks. 

5. Enabling automation

Implementing automation to tasks within the workflow or the whole workflow can certainly improve the workflow’s efficiency and reduce the risks of human errors. Automation can also free up valuable employee’s time from doing redundant tasks so they can focus on more crucial tasks on the workflow. 

However, it’s crucial to understand that automation should only be implemented on workflows that are already efficient. Automating inefficient workflows will only end up amplifying its inefficiencies.

So, only after we’ve optimized business workflows should we think about implementing automation, not the other way around. 

How To Optimize Business Workflows

We can optimize business workflows in three basic phases: 

1. Business workflow mapping: visualizing business workflows in the form of a workflow diagram. 
2. Business workflow analysis: analyzing the workflow diagram to identify inefficiencies and develop an optimization plan
3. Business workflow optimization: based on the results of the analysis process, we can optimize the business workflows

In practice, we can execute these three phases in just five basic steps: 

Step 1: Picking a business workflow

This step should be pretty straightforward if your business only involves one business workflow. If you have more than one business workflow, while the ultimate goal is to optimize all workflows, we should start with one. 

You can either: 

• Pick a workflow with apparent issues and inefficiencies so you can fix the problem ASAP.
• Pick a workflow with the highest potential impact for your business in the long term.
• Pick a workflow that will directly help in improving customer satisfaction (i.e., fixing your product’s flaw, shortening queue time, etc.)

Also, consider your business’s overall objectives when picking a workflow you’d prioritize to optimize. 

Step 2: Data gathering

Once you’ve picked a workflow to optimize, the next step is to gather as much information as you can about this specific workflow. 

Observe the business workflow when it’s being executed, and interview key stakeholders involved in the workflow to identify the following information: 

• The start and endpoints for the business workflow
• All the steps and tasks involved in the workflow
• Who’s responsible for executing which tasks
• The sequence tasks must be executed 
• The deadline for each task
• The information and resources required to accomplish each task

Step 3: Business Workflow Mapping

Once we’ve gathered enough information about the workflow, the next step is to visualize the business workflow in a workflow diagram. 

We can map the workflow with various techniques, but the most popular way is to use an ANSI standard flowchart. 

In a flowchart, we’ll use different shapes and symbols to represent the various actions in the business workflow. 

here are the most important ones for workflow mapping: 

Terminator: the oval shape represents the start and end points of a process

Operation: rectangle represents a specific task that is performed

Decision: diamond represents a point in the process where a decision must be made (i.e. Yes/No) before we can move on to the next step. 

Arrows: connecting different shapes in the process, representing the direction and flow of information

While you can start with a pen and paper to draw your workflow map, it’s best to use a workflow builder from your business workflow management software, so you can also perform the next steps in the same application. 

Step 4: Workflow Analysis

Once we’ve got an accurate as-is workflow diagram, the next step is to analyze the workflow by considering: 

• The objective of the workflow and the purpose of each task
• Whom is the workflow supposed to benefit/serve?
• The requirements for success for this business workflow?
• Whether all steps are needed, or some can be replaced/eliminated?
• Whether there is an opportunity for automation
• Whether everyone has enough information to perform their task and make their decisions
• Whether there are any bottlenecks and inefficiencies

Step 5: Optimization

Based on the analysis, we can optimize the business workflow to eliminate its inefficiencies. It’s crucial to remember that the optimization won’t be initially perfect, and we’ll need to go back to step 4 and re-optimize the business workflow continuously. 

Involve the employees and stakeholders to review the improvement. Again, gather as much data as possible on how we can further optimize the workflow. 

Closing Thoughts

Optimizing business workflows should be the concern of all businesses who’d like to improve their productivity. 

While it might seem complicated at first, business workflows can be optimized in just three phases: mapping the workflow, analyzing the workflow diagram, and implementing changes. 

By following the step-by-step guide, we’ve shared above and our actionable tips, you can start optimizing your business workflows right away.