October 9th, 2006 Posted in Business

A change in payment models?

It has been on my mind lately that our current way of working is incompatible with virtually all of it’s goals. The employer wished to maximise their outgoings (wages). The employer is never happy – there will always be more work to do. The employee wishes to get paid as much as possible. Some are mainly interested in their side of the deal, and feel that the “world owes them a living”. Some wish to accrue responsibility, power or both. There is a tug of war happening here, between “do more” and “do less”.

The current salary or salary plus bonus formats of payment leave a lot to be desired. The employer talks of “flexibility”, when what they really want is for you to be more efficient, or work extra hours for nothing. Ridiculous hourly rates are conjured up and charged to clients, based on operating overheads and wages that are paying people to sit around half the time.

Most if not all people cannot work at optimum efficiency for 8 hours in one go. The morning is about getting up to speed, and the last few hours are about doing as little as possible due to boredom or fatigue. Why not change the format of our work patterns? I would like to experiment with having people work for half as long, but with twice the motivation. Strip out all the breaks, lunch and skiving – just get the work done and go home. 4 hours should suffice.

This leads to other ideas… the concept of “piece work” but for other areas of work. Working hard in a salaried position just gets you more work, today and from now on as it appears you can handle more. What kind of incentive is that? Putting a value on a task would aid job costing and encourage employees to get on with it – now it’s their time they are wasting when they shamble around the office finding reasons to do nothing. If you have a day to do a task and complete it by lunchtime, you can then be enjoying your life during the afternoon instead of staring out the window wishing you were somewhere else.