Is it OK to send workers home when the work is done?

A reader we’re calling B.D. from the Southwest is a relatively new manager at his business. B.D.’s unit of several hundred people is responsible for completing specific tasks each workday. Over the past several months, B.D. has found that he has been able to successfully manage his employees so they often complete the specific tasks prior to the end of their traditional work day.

In the past when this happened, which wasn’t often, B.D. wrote, “we would sit idle for a half-hour or so until the end of day rolled around.” Now, he wrote, because of what B.D. sees as the efficiency or his strong workers, the times they finish early are greater.

“I hate the idea of them sitting around and I would like to send them home for the day when the work is done,” B.D. wrote. “Would there be anything wrong with that?”

As long as B.D. doesn’t run afoul of any company requirements that employees must physically be present until the end of the day, I don’t see anything wrong with dismissing them when the work is done.

If it turns out that any idle time at the end of the day could be used to get a jump on the next day’s work, it would seem appropriate for B.D. to explore that possibility. But if the work is such that it needs to be completed on a particular day, that might not be an option.

B.D. would be wise not to make this decision without letting his own manager know that that was his plan. There could be a reason that his bosses want all employees to remain at work until the end of the day even if his unit’s daily tasks have been completed. If B.D. doesn’t believe any such reasons offered are legitimate, he can decide whether he wants to push his case for early dismissal days when the work is done.

At the risk of sounding like I’m suggesting that workers should be squeezed for as much work as possible, it could also turn out that B.D.’s employees’ efficiency reflects the chance for his company to rethink how much work is expected each day from employees. Perhaps there is something B.D. is doing with his unit that is more efficient than used in managing other units that could be used as a model. The end result might be an increase in productivity all the way around — even though it would cut into B.D.’s unit possibly getting to go home early.

In his question to me, B.D.’s motivation for wanting to let his workers go when their work is done seems clear. He believes it would send a positive message to his employees and reward them for their hard and efficient work. Sitting around with nothing to do but wait for the clock to tick strikes B.D. as both a waste of time and demotivating. Better to have an efficient and motivated group of employees, he figures.

Finding a way to send a clear message to his employees seems the right thing to do, whether that’s sending them home early when their work is done or his unit serving as a model for how all units at his company can be more productive.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

A peel and a peony and small acts

A good friend and I took a walk the other day. The morning chill had given way to the warmth of the early June sun, so there were many people out walking or running. As we headed up the crest of a hill, I noticed a banana peel in the middle of the sidewalk, so I kicked it to the grassy area to the side to minimize the chance that other walkers or runners might slip on it and fall.

No big deal. We continued on our walk, interrupted only briefly for a couple of cups of coffee grabbed at a nearby shop.

It was good to catch up with my friend, but I was surprised by his text shortly after our walk.

“Here’s one small thing I noticed today,” he wrote. “I, like 999 out of 1,000 people, walked around the banana peel on the sidewalk today. You picked it up and put it to the side so no one slipped on it.”

My friend took this as a sign of how unusually caring a person I am. His note made me feel good, of course. Who doesn’t like to be thought of as caring? I didn’t know he noticed my kicking the peel to the side, but I’m not convinced it was all that unusual. My friend’s eyesight is not all that great, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t even seen the peel. And it wasn’t like I took the time to put the peel in the trash or find some compost bin into which to toss it. As caring acts go, kicking a discarded piece of fruit to the side seems low-effort.

I’m reminded regularly that in spite of a lot of noise suggesting otherwise, people do make an effort to care for one another. A few days after that walk, the woman I’d eat bees for and I returned home after a torrential downpour. We noticed that several of her recently bloomed peony plants looked like they had been trampled. She clipped off the flowers, cleaned up some of the mess, and thought nothing more of it.

That evening our neighbor rang our doorbell and apologized for the trampled peonies. It turns out that the roofers he hired had been a little too aggressive in tossing old roofing off of his house and some of it caught the wind and landed squarely on the plants. He didn’t have to come clean since we would have continued to believe that nature and not a roofer was the culprit. He offered to pay for the plants, but the plants weren’t dead and they will return next year. Nancy could have responded angrily, I suppose, but she offered him some peonies and we used his visit as an opportunity to catch up a bit.

A thoughtlessly discarded banana peel and a trampled peony plant are not earth-shattering events. It is, however, sometimes such seemingly minor things that allow us to choose to do the right thing even when no one is looking.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Choosing to say goodbye with a book

I am about to retire from my full-time job at the university where I’ve been teaching for the past 12 years. The school has offered me an office to use in retirement and the opportunity to teach from time to time if they want me to and I’m so inclined.

For the past several weeks as this year’s classes drew to a close, I’ve been recycling unneeded items, packing up boxes and generally preparing for the move. One can accumulate a lot of stuff in a dozen years, and slowly I’ve been trying to winnow that stuff down to a manageable mountain. What I have most of is books, shelves and shelves of books.

Some are related to what I teach. Others are about topics I find interesting or written by authors I enjoy reading, including a few former students. Many are duplicates of books I have on my shelves at home.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that many of the books might be as or more useful to others, particularly the students with whom I’ve worked.

As current and former students have been visiting for advice or to say goodbye, I have told each of them to take any book from my office shelves. Some students are hesitant at first, likely knowing how much I cherish books and wanting to make sure I actually want them to have them. Once I reassure them, none have passed up the offer.

Some go for a particular book — something on writing or a copy of one of the books I’ve written. Others have asked me to choose a title for them. For the latter, I always ask them what they are interested in reading. Sometimes it’s poetry. Sometimes it’s about politics. A few have asked me to choose a book for them that I found particularly useful or meaningful.

One student chose a paperback copy of George Herbert’s poetry and noted handwritten notes in the page margins. “Is this your handwriting?” she asked. I had to look at it to remember, but it indeed was my writing from 40 years ago when I was in graduate school. When I confirmed it was my writing, she got a little teary-eyed, which I presumed wasn’t because the book was not in pristine condition.

Most of the students ask me to write a note to them in the book, which I gladly do.

The best part of the job has been working with students. When it came to figuring out a way to let them know how much I have learned from them over the years, offering a book seemed the right thing to do. I have learned something from each of the books on my shelves. I find some writers engaging, some challenging, some occasionally infuriating, but all salve for an insatiable curiosity. The same is true of my experience with many of my students.

It would have been nice and easy to pack up the books and move them to the new office or donate those I didn’t want anymore to my local library. But I rarely choose to do anything solely because it is nice and easy. And now my former students have another little piece of my heart in print form.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.