With the City of Golden’s shift to a four-day workweek with their police department, it brings the conversation about the future of the workplace back to the forefront. One of the ideas that has seen recent popularity comes courtesy of an article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), titled "To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort."
That article, released in June by Greg McKeown, explains "the 85% rule, which suggests that to reach maximum output, you need to refrain from giving maximum effort."
The basics, as described in the article and backed by research, are that giving maximum effort is an outdated model that results in stress and burnout. On the other hand, giving 85% (or around that number) and taking breaks results in happier and potentially more productive employees.
It went on to recommend that managers encourage employees to set a specific end-work time, end meetings early, avoid high-pressure language, and follow an 85% mantra themselves.
“The concept of applying these principles to reducing burnout, I think, is actually very consistent with research that we have,” said Douglas Allen of DU’s Daniels College of Business.
The HBR article cited research from the Human Factors Lab at Microsoft. In a 2021 article, Microsoft found “researchers confirmed what many people sense from experience: Back-to-back virtual meetings are stressful. But the research also points to a simple remedy — short breaks.”
Professor Allen explained that research, and what it could mean within the workforce for those who try to give maximum effort all the time.
“Obviously, that stress builds up to some kind of potential burnout, which then leads to problems with either absenteeism or turnover,” he said.
Allen said it is important that companies do not equate effort with productivity — that a slight decrease in effort does not mean a decrease in productivity. In fact, he said he believes companies can still hit their goals while allowing employees to take a bit of a breather.
“You may be actually providing the space for health recovery, re-energizing that allows the 85% time to actually be so much more productive. That brings us up to beyond what the 100% effort would have yielded,” he said.
Allen went on to say that he believes in a post-pandemic workforce, employers may feel more pressure to adopt things like an 85% effort culture, four-day work weeks, or hybrid schedules just to compete for and retain their current employees.
You can read the HBR article here.
