Unstress Your Worker
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Most mismanagement are caused by one thing: Lack of long range planning on the company part. Although there are many ways management can err, I will concentrate on ways to retain your workers so that they will be loyal to you for a long time to come. As always, this is just my opinion on this issue, and that there are not only other opinions, but also other issues as well.
You may have noticed that workers in Silicon Valley routinely works 60 hours week. Sometimes, they even work longer than that. It's not uncommon that workers in some company in San Francisco works 80 hours per week. Working hard is fine, but working too hard isn't. Think about it: If you work twice as hard, then you should get paid twice as much. Actually, you should get paid more than that, because overtime pay is 150% of regular pay. If you think about it, there's a good reason why companies should honor that overtime pay.
Think of it this way: Assuming workers are dedicated, they will work hard for the company. Any time left can be spend with family and possibly taking night classes to further their skills either in their current job, or hopefully, prepare them for the next job, should a promotion opportunity is available. Now consider the effect that will happen if the company routinely ask the workers to work at their post at 60-80 hours per week? Suddenly, the time that can be used for training is gone, and that they effectively work at half pay. This means an $80,000 salary will be worth less than $40,000. Assuming 150% overtime pay, that salary is only at $32,000. Would you stay at a job that only pays you $32,000 effective rate? Would you take a pay cut from $80,000 to just $32,000 if you can work only 40 hours per week, instead of 80 hours per week?
Of course, the complains is that the company isn't making enough money to stay profitable without hard work. That statement is true, assuming the company in question is a start-up company. However, a well-established company, especially one with good reputation should be able to afford the 40 hours per week pay rate. There should be money stored to pay workers their due. Assuming that the company is so popular that clients all over seek your services, you either hire new people to handle new workload, or you raise your rates so that not so many people will come to you.
The problem with asking your worker to put in more hours than necessary is that there is no safety in doing so. What happens if the workers are working 80 hours a week? Well, they're stressed out and burnt out in a few months. Then they'll quit. What will happen with the workload? It will not decrease, I can tell you that. So the existing workload will be distributed to the rest of the team, stressing the team even more. You can try hiring new people, but they will see that the team is all stressed out and underpaid. With that kind of environment, there's no way you can hire good people, and if you're the type of manager who are having that kind of team, well, you will get only desperate people. Even if you do get new people, do you think current employees who is working 80 hours a week just to finish their own job will make time to train new hire? I don't think so. Their training will most likely be a rushed "Here's your office and computer. Now get to work!" type of thing.
So, as each team member quit one by one, the stress will increasingly become untolerable, until the whole thing collapse, and the whole department gets eliminated for being unprofitable and/or unproductive. What happens with the leftover employees? Well, assuming they have taken some classes to train for new skills, they'll fit right into the new environment. With them working 80 hours all the time, though, there's no time to train, and when a new position opens up, they'll have difficulty taking that position, especially if Human Resources unconditionally puts in "experience required". The result is that employees are stuck where they are indefinitely until they quit in disgust or the position is eliminated. Hence, even if you start with dedicated workers, if you keep stressing them out, there will be no company loyalty in the end.
The extra 150% overtime rate is there for a reason. Sometimes, during the fluctuation of business cycle, there exist a spike, or an extra rush job. Obviously, you're not going to hire and train new workers just for this momentary influx, so you ask your workers to stay an extra hour or two every day, to finish the job. The problem is, once management can see that their workers will work longer, they'll keep doing that. After all, having current employees work longer hours is cheaper than hiring and training new employees. Thus, they will fall into the trap of false productivity. By actually enforcing extra overtime rate, you're basically saying that while it's okay to use longer work hours for short term project, that's not okay for long term project. In addition, you ask managers to evaluate the profitability of a rush job, before actually accepting it, thus encouraging managers to engage is cost-profitability decision making, which is a manager's job, anyway. Hence, by raising the cost of working, you're actually doing a benefit to your employees, and to the company.
Of course, they all say that they're trying to hire new people all the time. It's just that talent isn't available. Wrong. Talent is available, just not at the low salary offered. Why should people choose to work for long hours at low wages? If the company is a start-up, they can offer stock options, which if the stock skyrockets, they'll get rich. That's not the case with mature companies. So, you will either raise the salary, which means raising your prices, or you start treating your employees with personal enrichment policies such as flex-time and relaxed dress code. Either way, you will have to compromise something. If not, then you'd better start growing your new employees because no one new will work for you.
At this point, I assume most managers in Silicon Valley and other high-competitive field are shouting at me, telling me that having their workers work 80 hours a week is the only way to survive. I disagree. There's working hard and there's working smart. If your job is cotton-picking, then you should, of course, work hard. If your job is problem solving, which by the way, is most jobs in Silicon Valley, then you should work smart. If you think about it, it makes sense. You can't really solve problem effectively if you're stressed out and tired. Your work flow should involve lots of break, to maximize the time that you work, so that you don't do sloppy work that needs to be fixed over and over again. Think about it: Would you trust a manager's decision, knowing that he is half-asleep from working too hard?
Hence, flex-time. Hence, 150% overtime pay. Hence, a very productive team working 40 hours per week. Early in my career, I put in an experiment. Which would get the job done faster? Method A: Work hard until it's finished. Method B: Break the job into little bits, and take lots of break in between. It turns out it takes the same amount of time. The difference is that method B is more fun and pleasurable. In addition, assuming the company pays me by the hour with flex-time, I am more cost effective with Method B, since I work less billable hours with Method B than Method A. Thus Method B is a win-win solution.
Of course, it's your business, and it's your choice. Just don't expect me to work for a company that expect its workers to work 60-80 hours per week if other company only requires me to work 40 hours per week, especially if flex-time is part of the package. At the very least, I will calculate the ratio of dollar per hour. I certainly don't want to belong to the category of high-paying job, only to find out that I make the same amount of pay, bagging grocery bags at a local supermarket. If you're a manager of a team, I suggest that you do that calculation, and figure out whether or not the constant complaint of overworked and underpaid is any good.