Freedom To Achieve For One-Child Policy Generation

By Frank Mulligan, Talent Software

Over on a magazine called APC, there is an interesting interview with Anne Kirah of Microsoft. The article is entitled íWorking 9 to 5 is Obsoleteí so it was bound to get my attention.

Anne is an anthropologist at Microsoft so her interest is in studying how people work, and I suppose how they donít work. She says that IT people make a big mistake by limiting access to the Net during working hours. She thinks they should be doing the opposite; opening the internet for completely unmonitored surfing.

This reminded me of China.

Her argument is that companies that filter internet access or block IM communications are going to find it harder to hang on to staff. This is premised on the idea that employerís benchmarks of productivity are based on something that doesnít exist anymore, the 9 to 5 workday.

The new world of work as described by Anne is based on personal responsibility for work. She states it as íjust give me the deadlines and Iíll decide when I want to do ití.

She describes a world in which workers, especially young ones, have many controls and limitations. There is little in the way of free play because parents have so many activities planned for their kids. When they leave school they continue to fill their lives in the same way, and the various new tools like the internet and mobile phone have become the substitute for what us old folk call ífree playí.

So if you want to work the way your younger staff work, open up. Youíll get more out of the One Child Policy generation by giving them the freedom to achieve.

(If you want to go deeper into this check out the Silicon Valley Cultures Project.)

Comments to: frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com