What work traditions need to go away?
One theme of my book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com & The Future of Work, is questioning aging work practices. Particularly ones followed our of tradition without evidence they contribute to quality of work.
Here’s a list of work practices that should be reconsidered: is there any evidence these contribute to work performance in any way?
- Dress codes (ties, skirts)
- Measurement by time, not performance
- Casual Fridays
- Hour long meetings by default
- Mission statements
- 9 to 5 work day
- unpaid overtime
- The cc: line on email (this was suggested 4 times)
- Corner offices
- Conference calls
- Unequal pay
- Anti-morale morale events
This list was generated from replies to two twitter posts .
While I’m happy to hear gripes about practices done poorly, ideally I’m looking for practices that have no value no matter how well they’re done.
What work traditions do you think need to go away?