> you need to encourage going home and not thinking about work at all
Why would any company encourage that? The only use that business had with people having family was that having family put workers at a disadvantage, pressed them against the wall, forced them to suffer through even more exploitation than they would if they were childless. Make them existentially fear even trying to look for other opportunities. And give them a place to escape the burden of care of their children.
I used to tell my employees to go home / not work late, because working longer hours doesn’t produce more output. You may get an initial uptick in output, but then it falls away as people get burned out/sick of work. Long hours also equals higher turnover of staff, which is expensive in many ways.
There’s nothing good over the long term that comes from long hours. It’s bad for morale and it’s bad for the business.
Respect your employees, consider their needs and you’ll have a more committed workforce with higher retention and higher quality output.
Jurisdictions vary, but around here that isn't a desirable quality. There is much more legal exposure if you have employees who have been around for a long time.
I considered it a benefit. It meant I could hire fewer people. I had good, motivated people, with institutional knowledge. When you’re a small/medium sized business with limited funds this is much more desirable. It costs less to keep fewer people employed and you can be much more agile.
Firing people who needed firing was never a problem and it didn’t tend to be people who’d been there for a long time that I wanted to fire.
High turnover of staff has outsized costs: loss of institutional knowledge, loss of momentum on key projects, time taken onboarding/training, recruitment fees, etc. it’s to be avoided imho.
Many companies encourage employees to go home and relax or engage in other rewarding activities; it can be very beneficial for the employer. For one thing, it encourages people to separate their work lives and home lives, which can decrease stress (often encouraging productivity and increasing tenure), as well as encouraging people to treat their office as somewhere to focus on work (to the exclusion of distractions). Additionally, in many fields it can be helpful to get a fresh perspective on your work every day, rather than getting tunnel-vision, which can happen from having your 'head down' all the time.
It’s uncommon in startups and companies focused on high-growth (such as the FAANGs). Older, smaller, and more stable companies tend to have more of this orientation, but it usually comes with significantly lower compensation.
I personally have less than 40 hours of week of good code in me. I've tried programming more than that many times, and I can do it for a few days but then I burn out and and less productive. So by encouraging me to not think about work outside of work hours they get more out of me when I'm at work.
Exactly which is why this article is so useless and misunderstands capitalism and does not know economic law. Corporations can never be family friendly becasue it is antagonistic to profit and therefor in direct violation to shareholders rights.
See Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919)
“A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits or to the non-distribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes.“
EDITING TO ADD: Down voting this comment is typical the sociopathic world we are living in where you cannot even show the truth of the law lest it affect sociopathic sensibilities. If one person would explain why my comment, which is just a fact, deserves to be downvoted I would appreciate the conversation.
There is much more to Dodge v. Ford Motor Company than meets the eye. Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law. Shareholder wealth maximization is a standard of conduct for officers and directors, not a legal mandate. The business judgment rule protects many decisions that deviate from this standard.
Courts accordingly treat Dodge v. Ford as a dead letter. (In the past three decades the Delaware courts have cited the case only once, and then on controlling shareholders' duties to minority shareholders). Nevertheless, legal scholars continue to teach and cite it. This Essay suggests that Dodge v. Ford has achieved a privileged position in the legal canon not because it accurately captures the law - it does not - or because it provides good normative guidance - it does not - but because it serves professors' need for a simple answer to the question, What do corporations do? Simplicity is not a virtue when it leads to misunderstanding, however. Law professors should mend their collective ways, and stop teaching Dodge v. Ford as anything more than an example of how courts can go astray.
> Corporations can never be family friendly becasue it is antagonistic to profit and therefor in direct violation to shareholders rights.
This can be false (can, not is!). When good employees demand family live then the company that gives it to them can get those good employees. There are good employees who are willing to settle for less money if the company allows for a good family life and so the company makes more money. (hint you won't find many of them in the Bay area, but if you can expand your reach to other cities they are not uncommon)
But this is an ethical call, not a legal one. And the law will always over rule ethics.
We need to change the laws to make corporations "family friendly" like mandatory 4 week vacations, better family leave compensation, and Medicare for All. Corporations are essentially sociopaths and have to be forced to have emapthy.
> We need to change the laws to make corporations "family friendly"
If the will was there, we could also simply exert that as a condition on employment. You don't really need laws when you can just do what the law is going to have you do anyway.
The problem is that the will isn't there. Only around half of the population are in what this thread seems to consider a family, so you are fighting against the wants of the other half who find their family-less situation, where they don't have the same "family friendly" concerns to worry about, to be a business advantage. That means it is hard to exert as a condition of employment and for the same reason hard to turn it into law.
I suspect that it would be possible to mobilize the bloc of families as a more unified group than singles, which would influence the policy and law making calculus
> which would influence the policy and law making calculus
Along with negotiations in the workplace. But this is all hypothetical. It could theoretically be done, but it is unlikely it will be done. Even amongst families, there isn't a whole lot of desire to do it. Don't let comments on the internet fool you. Talk is cheap.
Corporations don’t need to have empathy to make deals with the benefits you mention, they just need counter-parties which prioritize those terms. Medicare has little to do with corporations (which usually don’t like having to spend time and money on health insurance), and many/most would be happy to be relieved of the obligation. With respect to more vacation time, we’ve reached the current equilibrium because government has enacted standards which encourage ‘anchoring’, and most people prefer extra wages over vacation. Much like with airline seats, the companies are giving people what they want.
Sociopathy is characterized by a lack of empathy. Regardless, the only way to make a deal stick is to ensure it is beneficial to all parties.
Healthcare definitely impacts workers, but the only reason for widespread employer-provided healthcare in the USA is the tax exemption. This is not an employer-driven phenomenon.
I am talking about revealed preferences; it’s not a real preference if you are not willing to give something up for it. Extra vacation time comes at a cost in productivity and availability, which aren’t free, so your friends want their employers to give them something for nothing.
> so your friends want their employers to give them something for nothing.
The presented alternative (written by you, oddly enough) was extra wages without vacation. His friends aren't wanting something for nothing. He asserts that they are willing to give up the apparent extra wages coming their way in exchange for vacation.
More vacation for the same pay can be interpreted at least three ways:
- Same annual income for fewer days worked. This is increased daily pay
- Same daily pay for fewer days worked. This is actually increased daily compensation, because of how vacation pay accrual works (you’d have to be accruing at a higher rate).
- Same daily pay with fewer days worked, and same number of paid vacation days, along with additional unpaid vacation days. This one is the only interpretation which does not come with increased compensation per unit of work.
Two of these financially benefit the employee, and none of the three benefit the employer.
What alternative are you considering where the friends are actually giving the employer anything?
> More vacation for the same pay can be interpreted at least three ways:
If you read it in complete isolation, fine. But it wasn't written in isolation. It was clearly written alongside a hypothetical offer of extra wages as per the context of discussion. Accepting the extra wages would not equate to the same pay. That would be higher pay by any reasonable interpretation.
> What alternative are you considering where the friends are actually giving the employer anything?
If you really need it mechanically spelled out, imagine you are paid $x, accept an additional $y (the extra wages), then give $y back to the employer in exchange for vacation. $y is what is given to the employer. In actuality you would skip some steps because they are pointless in practice, but the outcome is the same.
Why would any company encourage that? The only use that business had with people having family was that having family put workers at a disadvantage, pressed them against the wall, forced them to suffer through even more exploitation than they would if they were childless. Make them existentially fear even trying to look for other opportunities. And give them a place to escape the burden of care of their children.