Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about whether slacking off at work or working less than eight hours a day is considered theft. And in this episode I've got with me my wife Sydney. Say hello. Hello. So both of us were managers in our past lives.

I managed a couple people while I was working in finance and Sydney how many people did you manage? Oh gosh at the peak of it maybe 10 to 12. Wow 10 to 12 people? Some of them were shared between managers but yeah at the busiest of times probably about there.

Did you enjoy managing people? Yes and no. It's a very hard job for those who've never tried it before. 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 consistent feedback from managers that one of the biggest things they don't enjoy about their jobs is managing egos and it seems like everybody has some kind of dream right some kind of ego some kind of desire and you've got to figure out how to balance all of that to keep the operation going.

Well not only that you have to make sure people are doing what they're supposed to and doing it well and I think that can be a very big challenge for a lot of managers. Right so this is a good point you make on doing something well. So if you saw the news better.com CEO basically fired 900 people not fired laid off 900 people three weeks before Christmas and the holidays and he said that over 250 out of the 900 were laid off because they were quote stealing from the company by only working two hours a day.

So in your mind do you think working two hours a day is stealing from the company if they're getting their job done? Stealing is a very hard word and I think that definitely set a lot of people off. Right. I'm not sure it's the correct or I won't say correct but I'm not sure it's you know maybe perhaps the best word to use you know when you're dealing with something so delicate.

So yeah you let them go and then you tell them they're stealing. Yeah that's pretty that's pretty harsh language because when you're making that kind of a big management decision you're gonna have a lot of a lot of emotion going around even for those who are staying on with the company.

Right. So if yeah I think it's pretty pretty harsh words. So maybe he could have said it seemed like 250 or plus people were not working to the optimal standards of day-to-day expectations. Or another way to put it is just under underperforming would be maybe 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 been a pretty big fallout because the head of I guess PR the head of marketing both of the women resigned and it seems like I mean I think the media and all of us are actually interested in this.

I'm interested in it from multiple angles. One you know obviously laying off before year-end bonuses or holidays is pretty cruel but that's like the reality of things like in banking. We went through so many rounds of layouts where people were laid off before the year-end bonus and the year-end bonus often consisted of between 20 percent to 80 percent of total compensation.

So from a management's point of view laying people off is strategic because it extracts as much productivity out of their employees as possible while not paying that year-end lump sum. Right. It's also hard though because if you if you put all of your remaining employees on edge if you're not going to be emotionally sensitive then they could it could backfire on them as well which he may not have thought about.

They could become very demotivated to want to stick around in an environment like that. They may just feel like I don't want to work for this kind of guy anymore. So it's hard to say. I mean I would think maybe 50 percent of the remaining employees would think okay wow they have some surveillance mechanisms to see how much we're working.

So maybe we should step it up step up the productivity because not only are they watching us we could get laid off in the next round. Yes I definitely think people would feel that way as well. Yeah I think actually the majority of employees will probably feel that way because let's be frank in an eight hour day I remember back in the office I mean I think I'd probably work five hours out of eight hours productively and the other times I would you know water cooler go for a long lunch.

I don't know. Right but productivity is only one piece of the equation. You can be very productive but be very miserable at the same time and demotivated. So you may know that you have to clock you know x number of hours and you know beat your deadlines or you know whatever assignments that you have but that may also make you very unhappy and yeah with when dealing with employees there's a lot of a lot of delicate balls to juggle.

Yeah delicate balls to juggle. Okay well I mean I personally don't like managing people because I mean the people I like I want them to succeed make more money get promoted you know just be awesome right. But then you don't like everybody and some people you know they could work harder but they're not and so it it does seem that like like we're small business owners so if we hired someone and with the contract that it's you know said 40 hours a week and we find out that they only work 10 to 20 hours a week but they're getting their work done but a lot of work can always be better right.

So like for example when I'm writing a post let's say it's a thousand words long I often think to myself after taking a break well actually I could include something else that would be quite informative and then I can include something else but then after a while there's kind of a limit on how much I can include before it gets too long and too boring.

So in terms of work I think there's always a better job that can be done so if you're not working at the contracted rate it does seem like you're taking advantage especially if time is money and people are getting paid by the hour. Yeah this is this is also another delicate thing from from a manager's perspective because you may have two different people with the same role who do it very differently.

People are individuals and they perform things at different speeds they may be more efficient at one thing and less efficient at another so they may be able to produce the same quality work by you know with a different number of hours of input. Right and then so the people who are more efficient would get paid and promoted more over the long run.

Yes yes. All right so in the long run I would say that everything is rational the best producers tend to rise and then the least producing people tend to not go as far. Right because the ones who are able to do a really good job efficiently who are they're motivated enough to get promoted they will go to their manager with that extra time that they have and hey hey can I help you with this or what else can I be doing you know I was able to get this done.

Managers love that and I would say that's kind of a rare quality for people who proactively go and seek more things to do. You know a lot of people if they have extra time they just want to twiddle their thumbs or surf the web and whatnot and I think I think employees do need some amount of down time.

Sure. Everybody does. So if you have down time you know you want to slack off a little at work I mean definitely go check out financialsamurai.com you know type some comments like you know share your thoughts and opinions maybe listen to a podcast while in the growler while you know taking a long lunch break.

Very productive ways to be unproductive at least you're learning something right. And this conversation reminds me of a saying when I was a manager and that is if you have something to do or you want someone to do something give it to your busiest employee because it really is your busiest employee who can get things done.

It's just like a single parent for example he or she has to figure out how to take care of their child work drop them off at school just juggles so many things that you know I think single parents frankly are heroes because here we are as dual parents with some help and it's very hard to manage all these things that are going on.

Yeah. And you know it's interesting with the way things are going work from home is here to stay right at least hybrid is there's no going back to sitting in the office all day every day for a lot of industries and I think surveillance company surveillance is just going to get more and more and whatever you think you're doing on your company phone or laptop just assume that management can see everything.

Yeah. All your action all your emails everything never. And your inaction. Oh yes and your inaction. So never write in an email what you don't want published on the front page of any newspaper that you would feel embarrassed for your mother or father to read. It's a really good rule that someone told me when I first started working in 1999 and I've pretty much kept that rule since then.

And if you're thinking about evading company surveillance well it's kind of impossible now but you should set expectations up front with your boss. For example let's say you're a parent. You can tell your boss you've got to drop off your kid to school between 830 a.m. and 930 a.m.

So you're not going to be online and you're not going to be responsive and you're not gonna be checking because you don't want to check your phone while you're driving. Set expectations so that people won't expect things from you during times that you're busy. It's all an expectations game to manage upwards and manage your career and manage things going forward.

Another thing is you should just join a winning company. A company that's growing is more likely to be more lax with your slacking off. You know I have friends who work at Facebook and Google. The companies are so wealthy. They have so much cash. So profitable. You know my friends they take three hours off during the middle of the day to watch San Francisco Giants matinee games and they go play tennis and all that.

But they're getting their work done and so the companies know that hey some work is better than no work and they have the growth and the cash to pay these people. Now as soon as there's a downturn or as soon as there's like some negative shift to your business model or your company's business model you need to lock down your slacking off and work harder and be more productive because the number one thing companies do during downturns obviously is to cut costs and one of the biggest cost centers is employee wages.

So although the pandemic really sucks for a lot of people it really does seem like thousands if not millions of people who have been able to work from home have benefited from this flexible life and this kind of flexibility is something that I've experienced since 2012 and something you have experienced since 2015.

And it's something that I just don't see us ever going back to a full-time job in the office. It just seems so inefficient and it's interesting that the entire world is kind of coming around to this concept and there's really no going back. Alrighty let us know what you think.

Is slacking off theft as the CEO of better.com said to all of us or is it you know if you're getting your work done it's okay because hey that might improve your mood and it might cause you to work harder during different times and cause you to stay loyal to your company for longer.

And also in other news I finally finished my book. I have sent it off to production. It took about 1.8 years to write and so now I wait for another maybe three weeks to four weeks for the professional copy editor to go through everything with a fine tooth comb and before doing some final final final edits.

And if you're curious the book is called Buy This Not That. Spend Your Way to Financial Freedom and it talks about all of our lives biggest decisions and how to make optimal decisions on those big decisions. Decisions such as should I have children early or later? Should I marry for money or love?

Should I go to private school or public school? So many of these big decisions we ultimately face and it's a really fascinating way to approach all of these topics in this book. So I'd love your support. It's coming out June 28th 2022 but I'll keep you guys posted in the newsletter at financialsamurai.com/newsletter and if you enjoyed this podcast I'd love a positive review.

Read them all and it keeps us motivated to keep on recording. Thanks everyone.