Warm up
—- ** FOR NEW STUDENTS ** —————————————- ———–
- What industry do you work in and what is your role?
- What are your responses in your role / position?
- Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
- How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
- What is the Minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
- How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
- What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?
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General discussion about your workweek:
- Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
- Anything of interest happening?
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Script
1.Four-day working weeks are a hot topic right now.
British trade union body TUC called for a shorter week in May, and now it’s on the Labour Party’s agenda.
At the annual party conference in Brighton this week, shadow chancellor John McDonnell proposed moving British workers to a 32-hour week–equivalent to four days–with no loss of pay. The change would happen within the next decade under a Labour government, he said.
The implementation of McDonnell’s plan will depend on companies successfully automating processes and improving worker productivity—so are British business owners ready and willing? Here’s what they think.
2.Amy Finlay, cofounder of Edinburgh IFA, describes the prospect of four-day weeks as “wishful thinking” and not grounded in the real world.
She says: “If anything, we need more days to be able to get everything done, and more hours in those days! We have a very small team at the moment, where everyone has very important roles to keep the business running smoothly. That means if one or more of our team were to be removed from their role for effectively a full working day, the system would no longer function.”
3.Ryan Arrindell, creative director at digital marketing agency Animate Designs, says that although a 32-hour week sounds like “a step toward a more healthy, well-rounded society,” U.K. small businesses will find it much more difficult to cope with the simultaneous expectation for longer opening hours and shorter working hours, compared to big businesses that could easily hire more staff to cover new shifts.
He also thinks offering shorter working weeks doesn’t chime with the cultural shift towards “always available, on-demand, connected products and services.”
4.But Karim Laljee, director of social media agency Soc-Med, which lets its staff work flexibly, thinks three full days plus two half days Monday through Friday would reflect the times of the week when people seem to be naturally less productive.
He reasons: “If we are being honest with ourselves, Friday afternoons can be very unproductive and we end up just being there, unless there is a major project going on. Also, during the week people often book afternoons off or have late starts while still producing good work and meeting deadlines.”
5.Nicholas Brady-Smith, CEO of comparison site CompareNewTyres–suspecting his company had a problem with presenteeism–conducted a month-long experiment, dropping staff working hours from 40 to 35 hours per week. Staff weren’t told the real reason why.
He recalls: “Although it took a couple of months for the results to come through, we were astounded that what we produced in that one month was near enough identical to months when staff had worked 40-hour weeks. I think, like many business owners, I fell into the trap of thinking the more hours we work, the more work we get done. I thought it would boost our sales, profits and productivity.
6.“Although our experiment was not scientific by any means, it does suggest that if we were to reduce our operations to four days per week, we might be able to achieve the same results whilst allowing our staff to benefit from the same salary. If people can spend more time doing what they want and what interests them, that can increase the odds they will stay with your company.”
However, Brady-Smith recognises that some businesses, including shops and the service industry, cannot be expected to offer four-day weeks.
7.This is echoed by international leadership expert Janine Woodcock who fears that a government-driven mandatory four day work week in the free market could render the U.K. non-competitive and reduce productivity with “real consequences” to the economy. She also thinks it could promote a culture of “leaveism” among the most ambitious employees.
Woodcock explains: “Many businesses only survive as a result of employees offering ‘discretionary effort.’ Ambitious employees recognise that going above and beyond their remit is core to their perceived value. An officially reduced working week may have little real world impact on these valuable employees who are committed to their organisation’s success. They will find ways, such as leaveism–using flexitime and annual leave to complete work outside of hours–to maintain their performance levels for the good of the business, reducing an official policy of fewer hours to a toothless tiger.”
Discussion
1. Would you prefer to work a shorter week, what would you do with your extra time?
2. Do you think you would achieve more and be able to meet your deadlines if you worked a shorter week?
3. how much “wasted time” do you feel like you have at work?
Interview questions cont.
15. “How will my leadership responsibilities and performance be measured? By whom?”
16. “Are there any weaknesses in the department that you are working to improve?”
17. “What new endeavours is the company currently undertaking?”
18. “What goals or objectives need to be achieved in the next six months? Next year?”
19. “What areas of the job would you like to see improvement in with regard to how the person who most recently performed these duties?”
20. “Describe the atmosphere of the office.” (With this question, you are looking for clues on politic turf wars, pressure and stress level.)
21. “What types of people seem to excel here?”
22. “Is the company quick or slow to adopt new technology?”
23. “How would you describe the politics of this organization?”
24. “Where is the person who previously held this job?” (If fired, ask why; if promoted, where he or she went; if it is a newly created job, get a better idea of why it was added.)
25. “How does the company promote personal and professional growth?”
Keywords
- equivalent = equal to
- ready and willing = prepared and inclined
- prospect = the possibility or likelihood of some future event occurring.
- grounded = realistic / based on/in
- well-rounded = having a personality that is fully developed in all aspects.
- cope = deal effectively with something difficult.
- simultaneous = at the same time
- chime with = if one thing chimes in with another thing or chimes with it, the two things are similar or consistent with each other.
- presenteeism = the practice of being present at one’s place of work for more hours than is required, especially as a manifestation of insecurity about one’s job.
- astounded / astonished / amazed
- trap of thinking – Trap: Jumping to Conclusions. We predict what is going to happen, with little or no evidence.
- echoed = (of an object or event) be reminiscent of or have shared characteristics with.
- render = cause to be or become; make.
- leaveism = is a term first coined in 2013 by Dr Ian Hesketh, a researcher at University of Manchester – in the UK, to describe the phenomena of employees using flexitime, annual leave, rest days and other leave entitlement schemes to have time off when they are in fact too unwell to go to work.
- toothless tiger = If you describe something such as an official group or a law as toothless, you mean it has no real power and is not effective
