Unit 12 Working 24/7
Americans work longer hours than nearly anyone in the developed world, even the Japanese. For many professionals and corporate managers, the 40-hour work week is history; 60- to 80-hour work weeks are now the norm.
Signs of our addiction to work are everywhere. For one, rush hours are starting earlier and ending later. When 60 Minutes first broadcast this story a few months ago, the first train for commuters from the suburbs into New York had just been pushed back to 4:45 a.m., by popular demand.
Why do Americans work so much? The simplest answer is because we can.
The Digital Revolution means cell phones, wireless Internet and handheld computers like the BlackBerry allow us to work anywhere, anytime, 24/7. And we do, as correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
It's 7 a.m. Pacific time, and Joe Hurd is still in bed. But this 36-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur has already made two phone calls over the Internet to clients overseas. He has checked e-mails on his BlackBerry and sent a half-dozen instant messages from his laptop.
For Joe and his wife, Christina Mireles, new technology means their work day isn't 9 to 5. It's 5 to 9.
\,\
\living room,\
With a masters and a law degree each, they're not exactly underachievers. Joe logs 12- to 15-hour days as vice president of an Internet travel Web site.
Sometimes, Joe admits he gets up at night to send e-mails.
\definitely,\
\she added.
\
Christina, a vice president of a charter school company, works a few hours less than Joe. She says she is no match for her husband in terms of gadgets.
\personal and …,\
\
Not a minute is wasted, even before getting to the office. Christina juggles the two cell phones, returning business and personal calls. She usually eats behind the wheel.
On his commute, Joe manages the consulting business he has on the side and even keeps track of new messages on his BlackBerry. But he says he's never tried anything as dangerous as typing out an e-mail while driving in rush hour traffic.
Joe's work day is a blur of business meetings, incoming phone calls, and hundreds of e-mails.
\the telephone. I can have a conversation via IM. And I can keep exactly probably half an ear on a conversation with a person,\
\
\
Asked if he is doing all of these things well when he does them at the same time, Joe says, \know, this is not neurosurgery we're talking about here … but you can do a lot of that simultaneously.\
Joe may be able to pull that off, but many corporate executives say the volume of voicemail and e-mail they get has become unmanageable — eating up an average of three hours a day.
Combine that with a corporate culture that values endless meetings and \the night just to get their \
60 Minutes visited the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, the electronics retailer, in Richfield, Minn. Employees Stacy Verstraight, Jason Dehne and Marissa Plume say that putting in 60- to 80-hour weeks got them pats on
the back.
\your co-workers would say, 'Hey, wow, were you working that whole time? Wow. Great job,'\
But if you weren't there at the crack of dawn, you were put down.
\appointment, you know, people are saying, 'Oh gee. Glad you could show up today.' You know, so it felt [like] a little bit of a dig,\were just watching other people. So it felt like a lot of unnecessary pressure.\
\because I had to work,\
In 2002, after a jump in people quitting and filing stress-related health claims, Best Buy launched an experiment: employees would be allowed to work wherever and whenever they wanted, as long as they got their jobs done.
That means the BestBuy.com unit that Chap Achen manages often looks like a ghost town.
\folks literally don't come in the office for weeks at a time,\says Achen.
If asked where a specific employee physically is, Achen says he doesn't know. \with a wireless connection.\
Since the Best Buy experiment started, Jason's health has improved. Normally at his desk by 7:30 a.m., he now jogs to his local coffee shop and takes his 8 a.m. conference call by cell phone.
Marissa, a night owl, now does her best work around midnight from her bedroom.
\have to trust that my team is going to get the work done in this environment,\factor that actually makes them work harder for you.\
\
\
Or longer. Stacy, Jason and Marissa say they often work more hours than they did before. Not a bad deal for the company. Productivity among employees in the program has jumped a healthy 35 percent.
\
Asked why that's a positive, Jason says, \
\people?\
\
Asked if she wants to work the 70 hours, Stacy replied, \
The group all said they didn't think they were working too much when asked by Stahl.
\
\
Maybe they are: They don't even make more money for the longer hours. But when you try to cut back on the hours, it's not that easy.
Mike Moody and Jeff Ward left high stress, six-day-a-week jobs as big-city lawyers because they wanted to spend more time with their wives and children. They decided to do what more and more working mothers are doing — share a job.
\for the first six months of the job, I was referred to as the new Joanne,\
The job of assistant in-house counsel at Timberland in Stratum, N.H. had been filled by two women for years.
\weekend,\
It is a pretty sweet deal. They each work three days a week, overlapping on Tuesdays.
How do they keep the office from pulling them back in on their days off?
\BlackBerry.\
\
The BlackBerry is practically attached to Mike's body — even on his days off, when he's the house-husband in the kitchen and in the laundry room.
The company pays them 75 percent of full-time pay, because, as it's turned out, they each end up working about 40 hours a week.
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\
\
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With so many Americans working more than 40 hours a week, it may surprise you to learn that when it comes to productivity, the U.S. is not No. 1. In fact, workers in four European countries, including France, are more productive per hour of work than Americans — that's the key: \work\— even though the Europeans work less and take more vacation.
Joe Hurd thinks all these gadgets and technology are helping him be more productive. \keeping the e-mails flowing, you know, multiple conversations going, then yes, the technology does facilitate that.\
\, is that oftentimes we really don't have substantive conversations when we come home. We will be sitting on our couch, each doing work,\
It turns out Joe and Christina e-mail and instant-message each other, even if they are at home.
\what about your relationship? I'm not trying to get too personal here...,\
\conversation even once a week and not be, I mean, really be concentrating
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