Dive Brief:
- Huffington Post reports that the always-on, sleep-with-your-smartphone ethic is so pervasive that last week Goldman Sachs actually had to explicitly forbid interns from working all night long. Two years ago it gave its analysts the privilege of taking Saturdays off.
- Surface moves like this, while laudable in intent, will do little to change the culture at elite, high-paying firms where the "best" workers put in absurdly long hours and are always available, according to the author, Emily Peck.
- Obsessive overachievers who are consistently rewarded for working a lot will just figure out workarounds.
Dive Insight:
The intent of a program like Goldman Sachs' is right but it doesn't work, Grant Freeland, a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, told Huffington Post. "It's a bit like saying you want to control the weather by telling the thermometer, 'don't go over 80 degrees,' " he said. Freeland's firm figured out a way for employees to work fewer hours -- not by using a blunt hammer like a work ban but by deeply examining how people work and facilitating conversations about how to do it better.
Boston Consulting has expanded an original innovative project and now just about all of its 6,000 consultants participate in what the firm calls PTO, or Predictability, Teaming and Open Communication. Boston Consulting also ties succeeding in this program to advancing within the firm: "If you want to be promoted, you have to have good upward feedback on this," Freeland said. HR leaders looking for an innovative way tackle this issue should check out the PTO program.
