Is_Slacking_Off_At_Work_Theft
00:00:00.000 | Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about whether
00:00:04.480 | slacking off at work or working less than eight hours a day is considered theft. And in this
00:00:12.320 | episode I've got with me my wife Sydney. Say hello. Hello. So both of us were managers in our past
00:00:18.480 | lives. I managed a couple people while I was working in finance and Sydney how many people
00:00:24.000 | did you manage? Oh gosh at the peak of it maybe 10 to 12. Wow 10 to 12 people? Some of them were
00:00:33.040 | shared between managers but yeah at the busiest of times probably about there. Did you enjoy
00:00:39.600 | managing people? Yes and no. It's a very hard job for those who've never tried it before.
00:00:48.000 | It's got a lot of perks but it's also a job that takes a lot of patience to do well. Well I hear
00:00:55.920 | consistent feedback from managers that one of the biggest things they don't enjoy about their jobs
00:01:01.600 | is managing egos and it seems like everybody has some kind of dream right some kind of ego some
00:01:08.720 | kind of desire and you've got to figure out how to balance all of that to keep the operation going.
00:01:14.480 | Well not only that you have to make sure people are doing what they're supposed to and doing it
00:01:20.000 | well and I think that can be a very big challenge for a lot of managers. Right so this is a good
00:01:26.480 | point you make on doing something well. So if you saw the news better.com CEO basically fired 900
00:01:34.160 | people not fired laid off 900 people three weeks before Christmas and the holidays and he said that
00:01:40.960 | over 250 out of the 900 were laid off because they were quote stealing from the company by only
00:01:47.200 | working two hours a day. So in your mind do you think working two hours a day is stealing from
00:01:54.480 | the company if they're getting their job done? Stealing is a very hard word and I think that
00:02:00.880 | definitely set a lot of people off. Right. I'm not sure it's the correct or I won't say correct but
00:02:07.600 | I'm not sure it's you know maybe perhaps the best word to use you know when you're dealing with
00:02:14.000 | something so delicate. So yeah you let them go and then you tell them they're stealing. Yeah
00:02:19.680 | that's pretty that's pretty harsh language because when you're making that kind of a big management
00:02:24.240 | decision you're gonna have a lot of a lot of emotion going around even for those who are
00:02:30.720 | staying on with the company. Right. So if yeah I think it's pretty pretty harsh words. So maybe
00:02:38.960 | he could have said it seemed like 250 or plus people were not working to the optimal standards
00:02:48.800 | of day-to-day expectations. Or another way to put it is just under underperforming would be maybe
00:02:56.160 | another way to say it. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard. It's a hard thing. It seems like it's
00:03:01.200 | been a pretty big fallout because the head of I guess PR the head of marketing both of the women
00:03:08.720 | resigned and it seems like I mean I think the media and all of us are actually interested in
00:03:15.600 | this. I'm interested in it from multiple angles. One you know obviously laying off before year-end
00:03:23.360 | bonuses or holidays is pretty cruel but that's like the reality of things like in banking.
00:03:29.680 | We went through so many rounds of layouts where people were laid off before the year-end bonus
00:03:34.000 | and the year-end bonus often consisted of between 20 percent to 80 percent of total compensation.
00:03:40.480 | So from a management's point of view laying people off is strategic because it extracts as much
00:03:47.280 | productivity out of their employees as possible while not paying that year-end lump sum.
00:03:53.520 | Right. It's also hard though because if you if you put all of your remaining employees on edge
00:04:00.240 | if you're not going to be emotionally sensitive then they could it could backfire on them as well
00:04:09.200 | which he may not have thought about. They could become very demotivated to want to stick around
00:04:14.880 | in an environment like that. They may just feel like I don't want to work for this kind of guy
00:04:20.480 | anymore. So it's hard to say. I mean I would think maybe 50 percent of the remaining employees would
00:04:29.200 | think okay wow they have some surveillance mechanisms to see how much we're working.
00:04:36.400 | So maybe we should step it up step up the productivity because not only are they watching
00:04:42.160 | us we could get laid off in the next round. Yes I definitely think people would feel that way
00:04:48.160 | as well. Yeah I think actually the majority of employees will probably feel that way because
00:04:54.400 | let's be frank in an eight hour day I remember back in the office I mean I think I'd probably
00:05:00.560 | work five hours out of eight hours productively and the other times I would you know water cooler
00:05:09.360 | go for a long lunch. I don't know. Right but productivity is only one piece of the equation.
00:05:15.360 | You can be very productive but be very miserable at the same time and demotivated. So you may know
00:05:22.240 | that you have to clock you know x number of hours and you know beat your deadlines or you know
00:05:29.280 | whatever assignments that you have but that may also make you very unhappy and yeah with when
00:05:36.320 | dealing with employees there's a lot of a lot of delicate balls to juggle. Yeah delicate balls to
00:05:43.040 | juggle. Okay well I mean I personally don't like managing people because I mean the people I like
00:05:50.240 | I want them to succeed make more money get promoted you know just be awesome right.
00:05:55.520 | But then you don't like everybody and some people you know they could work harder but they're not
00:06:01.360 | and so it it does seem that like like we're small business owners so if we hired someone
00:06:07.600 | and with the contract that it's you know said 40 hours a week and we find out that they only work
00:06:16.000 | 10 to 20 hours a week but they're getting their work done but a lot of work can always be better
00:06:23.680 | right. So like for example when I'm writing a post let's say it's a thousand words long
00:06:30.080 | I often think to myself after taking a break well actually I could include something else
00:06:34.480 | that would be quite informative and then I can include something else but then after a while
00:06:38.560 | there's kind of a limit on how much I can include before it gets too long and too boring.
00:06:42.160 | So in terms of work I think there's always a better job that can be done so if you're not
00:06:48.080 | working at the contracted rate it does seem like you're taking advantage especially if time is
00:06:56.160 | money and people are getting paid by the hour. Yeah this is this is also another delicate thing
00:07:01.520 | from from a manager's perspective because you may have two different people with the same role who
00:07:08.000 | do it very differently. People are individuals and they perform things at different speeds they may be
00:07:13.600 | more efficient at one thing and less efficient at another so they may be able to produce the same
00:07:19.840 | quality work by you know with a different number of hours of input. Right and then so the people
00:07:26.800 | who are more efficient would get paid and promoted more over the long run. Yes yes. All right so in
00:07:33.360 | the long run I would say that everything is rational the best producers tend to rise and then
00:07:42.160 | the least producing people tend to not go as far. Right because the ones who are able to do
00:07:48.000 | a really good job efficiently who are they're motivated enough to get promoted they will go
00:07:54.320 | to their manager with that extra time that they have and hey hey can I help you with this or what
00:08:00.160 | else can I be doing you know I was able to get this done. Managers love that and I would say
00:08:06.080 | that's kind of a rare quality for people who proactively go and seek more things to do.
00:08:15.040 | You know a lot of people if they have extra time they just want to twiddle their thumbs or surf the
00:08:18.800 | web and whatnot and I think I think employees do need some amount of down time. Sure. Everybody does.
00:08:25.840 | So if you have down time you know you want to slack off a little at work I mean definitely go
00:08:31.280 | check out financialsamurai.com you know type some comments like you know share your thoughts and
00:08:36.480 | opinions maybe listen to a podcast while in the growler while you know taking a long lunch break.
00:08:41.440 | Very productive ways to be unproductive at least you're learning something right.
00:08:46.080 | And this conversation reminds me of a saying when I was a manager and that is if you have something
00:08:52.320 | to do or you want someone to do something give it to your busiest employee because it really is your
00:08:58.960 | busiest employee who can get things done. It's just like a single parent for example he or she
00:09:05.520 | has to figure out how to take care of their child work drop them off at school just juggles so many
00:09:13.440 | things that you know I think single parents frankly are heroes because here we are as dual
00:09:19.040 | parents with some help and it's very hard to manage all these things that are going on. Yeah.
00:09:24.560 | And you know it's interesting with the way things are going work from home is here to stay right
00:09:30.080 | at least hybrid is there's no going back to sitting in the office all day every day for a
00:09:35.600 | lot of industries and I think surveillance company surveillance is just going to get
00:09:41.120 | more and more and whatever you think you're doing on your company phone or laptop just assume that
00:09:46.560 | management can see everything. Yeah. All your action all your emails everything never. And your
00:09:53.200 | inaction. Oh yes and your inaction. So never write in an email what you don't want published on the
00:10:00.480 | front page of any newspaper that you would feel embarrassed for your mother or father to read.
00:10:06.080 | It's a really good rule that someone told me when I first started working in 1999
00:10:09.920 | and I've pretty much kept that rule since then. And if you're thinking about evading company
00:10:16.480 | surveillance well it's kind of impossible now but you should set expectations up front with your
00:10:21.280 | boss. For example let's say you're a parent. You can tell your boss you've got to drop off your
00:10:26.880 | kid to school between 830 a.m. and 930 a.m. So you're not going to be online and you're not
00:10:31.360 | going to be responsive and you're not gonna be checking because you don't want to check your
00:10:34.320 | phone while you're driving. Set expectations so that people won't expect things from you during
00:10:41.520 | times that you're busy. It's all an expectations game to manage upwards and manage your career
00:10:47.520 | and manage things going forward. Another thing is you should just join a winning company. A
00:10:52.800 | company that's growing is more likely to be more lax with your slacking off. You know I have friends
00:11:01.520 | who work at Facebook and Google. The companies are so wealthy. They have so much cash. So
00:11:07.760 | profitable. You know my friends they take three hours off during the middle of the day to watch
00:11:13.040 | San Francisco Giants matinee games and they go play tennis and all that. But they're getting
00:11:18.960 | their work done and so the companies know that hey some work is better than no work and they have
00:11:26.640 | the growth and the cash to pay these people. Now as soon as there's a downturn or as soon as there's
00:11:32.400 | like some negative shift to your business model or your company's business model you need to lock
00:11:37.680 | down your slacking off and work harder and be more productive because the number one thing companies
00:11:42.960 | do during downturns obviously is to cut costs and one of the biggest cost centers is employee wages.
00:11:49.040 | So although the pandemic really sucks for a lot of people it really does seem like thousands if
00:11:57.040 | not millions of people who have been able to work from home have benefited from this flexible life
00:12:02.240 | and this kind of flexibility is something that I've experienced since 2012 and something you
00:12:07.200 | have experienced since 2015. And it's something that I just don't see us ever going back to a
00:12:13.600 | full-time job in the office. It just seems so inefficient and it's interesting that the entire
00:12:21.120 | world is kind of coming around to this concept and there's really no going back. Alrighty let us know
00:12:27.520 | what you think. Is slacking off theft as the CEO of better.com said to all of us or is it you know
00:12:35.920 | if you're getting your work done it's okay because hey that might improve your mood and it might
00:12:41.600 | cause you to work harder during different times and cause you to stay loyal to your company for
00:12:46.720 | longer. And also in other news I finally finished my book. I have sent it off to production. It took
00:12:53.360 | about 1.8 years to write and so now I wait for another maybe three weeks to four weeks for the
00:13:00.560 | professional copy editor to go through everything with a fine tooth comb and before doing some
00:13:05.760 | final final final edits. And if you're curious the book is called Buy This Not That. Spend Your Way
00:13:11.360 | to Financial Freedom and it talks about all of our lives biggest decisions and how to make optimal
00:13:19.680 | decisions on those big decisions. Decisions such as should I have children early or later? Should
00:13:26.240 | I marry for money or love? Should I go to private school or public school? So many of these big
00:13:31.840 | decisions we ultimately face and it's a really fascinating way to approach all of these topics
00:13:38.160 | in this book. So I'd love your support. It's coming out June 28th 2022 but I'll keep you guys
00:13:43.440 | posted in the newsletter at financialsamurai.com/newsletter and if you enjoyed this podcast
00:13:48.880 | I'd love a positive review. Read them all and it keeps us motivated to keep on recording. Thanks
00:13:54.400 | everyone.