Category Archives: Why do we work?

Questions and hopefully some answers for my upcoming book on WorkVitamins

What are WorkVitamins?

Leave a reply

In 2001, Martin van der Linden developed a new architectural methodology while working as an assistant researcher at Tokyo’s Waseda Univeristy. Martin believed that architecture should be a catalyst for change in innovative environments, and his methodology – called WORKVITAMINS – was based on this idea. But designing innovative and inspirational spaces from the inside out is not an easy task: descriptors such as poet, artist and great lover must be earned by the one being described, and the title of innovative workspace is no different. Therefore, Martin crafted a closed-loop system with four distinct steps:

Initiate: setting the tone and direction for the project using a Shared Workplace Vision,

Analyse: Understanding the specific place-related needs of the organisation. Finding the gaps between an organisation’s ideal conditions and its current situation,

Change: Testing creative ideas to address the issues discovered during the analysis,

Implement: the realisation of steps 1 through 3 and the design and construction of a truly innovative workplace.

Architecture is space created for human activity. The role of an architect designing a workspace is to provide the users with a variety of spatial choices that will accommodate their changing work needs. Architecture that starts with WorkVitamins encourages authentic experiences at work.

 

ROWE

If you look at your own day at the office, don’t these office maths make sense?

8:00am
• Enter the office building.
• Drop your stuff in your office and head to the coffee maker.
• Chat with a co-worker about last night’s game
• Make coffee – it’s already empty
• Look for creamer – where is the damn creamer?
• Go to the supplies cabinet. Find old creamer and dump it in your coffee. Gag a few times and complain to everyone around you.
• Get sidetracked on the way back to your office. A co-worker wants you to check out their new truck. “Nice wheels” you say.

9:00am
• Plop down in a meeting.
• What’s this meeting about, anyway?
• Listen with one ear while daydreaming about the weekend.

9:30
• Update meeting participants about your project (START THE CLOCK)

9:35
• Go back to daydreaming. (STOP THE CLOCK)

10:00
• Go to the bathroom
• Run to next meeting

10:05
• Chat with co-workers while waiting for everyone else to show up

10:15
• Start meeting
• Solve issue with last night’s logistics snafu (START THE CLOCK)
• Give update to team on upcoming shipment

10:45
• Blackberry rings – step out of meeting to take a call from child’s school. (STOP THE CLOCK)

11:00
• Go to your office

11:05
• Begin looking at emails (START THE CLOCK)

11:10
• Get interrupted by manager – asks you what you think about this crazy weather. (STOP THE CLOCK)

11:30
• Head to non-working lunch

1:00
• Back in the office.

In a Traditional Workplace, it looks like that dude already put in 5 hours of work!

In a ROWE, all  that dude did was put in exactly 40 minutes of work and wasted 4 hours and 20 minutes displaying presenteeism.

Next time someone says, “I put in 60 hours last week!” you can roll your eyes, because they are probably using Traditional Workplace Math.

via ROWE

The smell of fear

A smell you sometimes smell in offices is fear. It seems now that humans can actually smell this according to this article in The Guardian:

“People can unconsciously detect whether someone is stressed or scared by smelling a chemical pheromone released in their sweat, according to researchers who have investigated the underarm secretions of petrified skydivers.”

The research was funded by US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency and the military might want to use it as a weapon…

Dr Lilianne Mujica-Parodi at Stony Brook University in New York State stated that: “We demonstrate here the first direct evidence for a human alarm pheromone … our findings indicate that there may be a hidden biological component to human social dynamics, in which emotional stress is, quite literally, ‘contagious’.”

Yet another reason to inject some WorkVitamins in the office!

Happy for Work

Europeans work less than Americans and have longer holidays according to this article in the WSJ (subscription needed)

By almost every measure, Europeans do work less and relax more than Americans. According to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Americans work 25% more hours each year than the Norwegians or the Dutch. The average retirement age for European men is 60.5, and it’s even lower for European women. Our vacations are pathetically short by comparison: The average U.S. worker takes 16 days of vacation each year, less than half that typically taken by the Germans (35 days), the French (37 days) or the Italians (42 days).

. . .

For most Americans, work is a rock-solid source of life happiness. Happy people work more hours each week than unhappy people, and work more in their free time as well. Even more tellingly, people with more hours per day to relax outside their jobs are not any happier than those who have less non-work time. In short, the idea that our heavy workloads are lowering our happiness is twaddle.

. . .

This may be one reason why Americans tend to score better than Europeans on most happiness surveys. For example, according to the 2002 International Social Survey Programme across 35 countries, 56% of Americans are “completely happy” or “very happy” with their lives, versus 44% of Danes (often cited in surveys as the happiest Europeans), 35% of the French and 31% of Germans. Those sweet five-week vacations and 35-hour workweeks don’t seem to be stimulating all that much félicité. A good old-fashioned 50-hour week might be a better option.