> In addition, if people are working less than 8-10 productive hours per day, then they are clearly not being as productive as they could be.
So, are people expected to be in the office for 12+ hours a day? Nobody is 100% productive from the moment they step in the door, every day. The fact that the author even wrote the number 10 here makes me a bit angry.
I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, does he have a section on employee burnout?
You definitely should read the whole thing with more attention to this aspect - getting productive hours out of employees is an extremely difficult task, but it does pay off big time. This can be achieved with the "fun" environment at work, with meals at the office, with very clear goals and alignment on those goals, with a bigger ambition in mind, with creative compensation schemes, flexible hours, remote work schemes, and with a lot of other things. That's why there are "managers" (not necessarily) CEOs who can get this productivity out of people, and those who cannot.
I'm all for it if an employer wants to make it more attractive to stay at the office. I have fun at work, I eat with my coworkers most days, and I'm not out the door at the 8-hour marker. However, as it's worded, there's an implied "problem" with an employee if they're not actively engaged with work for 10 hours a day.
Between meetings, chatty coworkers, meals, coffee breaks, and just periodic mental fatigue, I think 5-6 hours of productivity is a much more feasible goal for an 8-hour work day.
If the meetings are productive meetings and not hour-long Facebook-browsing snoozefests, then yes, meeting attendance is a form of productivity
> chatty coworkers
Get rid of the open floor plan, allow for remote work, other strategies to promote the proverbial butts-in-seats instead of milling about the water cooler
> meals
Delivered to the office
> Coffee breaks
Why coffee machines of whichever kind (Keurig, Nespresso, superautomatic espresso machines) pay for themselves.
The point is that OP's point is that good management reduces (not eliminate, that's impossible) distractions, to promote higher productivity.
Look, different places have different workers and cultures and management. If you work in a place where everyone suffers from the lack of socialization, then management should make things more sociable somehow. If you work in a place where you're the only person who suffers from the lack of socialization, then perhaps you should find another job.
So, are people expected to be in the office for 12+ hours a day? Nobody is 100% productive from the moment they step in the door, every day. The fact that the author even wrote the number 10 here makes me a bit angry.
I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, does he have a section on employee burnout?