Re:Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking
by wpietri on Sunday February 14, 2021 @08:53AM
(#26132383)
I think this has to come through a shift in power to employees. Hoping for execs to become enlightened will be a long wait. The way we got things like a 40-hour week and decent labor laws was through large-scale collective action. But in software, I think more local approaches work too.
For example, we recently had an emergency where part of my team had to work on the weekend. So I started the custom of "incident retros". Before the meeting I started an incident timeline and then asked others to contribute. In the meeting, we read through the timeline, queued up discussion topics, and voted on which ones to pursue. As we discussed, we listed possible action items. At the end we voted on those and people volunteered to pick up the ones they thought they could do.
On the one hand, this is a pretty normal technique for improving business processes. On the other, it helped train people that 1) weekend work is not normal and we should prevent it, 2) we as a team have authority over our work conditions, and 3) we can take frequent small action toward more healthy work conditions.
I don't think one of these will make a big difference. But over time I expect we can create a culture where employee health and worker productivity are seen as closely aligned, and where if managers try to order us to do something foolish, the team will feel empowered to push back. If in that push citing wellness pablum helps, I'm happy to do it. But lasting change comes from shifting organizational power.
For example, we recently had an emergency where part of my team had to work on the weekend. So I started the custom of "incident retros". Before the meeting I started an incident timeline and then asked others to contribute. In the meeting, we read through the timeline, queued up discussion topics, and voted on which ones to pursue. As we discussed, we listed possible action items. At the end we voted on those and people volunteered to pick up the ones they thought they could do.
On the one hand, this is a pretty normal technique for improving business processes. On the other, it helped train people that 1) weekend work is not normal and we should prevent it, 2) we as a team have authority over our work conditions, and 3) we can take frequent small action toward more healthy work conditions.
I don't think one of these will make a big difference. But over time I expect we can create a culture where employee health and worker productivity are seen as closely aligned, and where if managers try to order us to do something foolish, the team will feel empowered to push back. If in that push citing wellness pablum helps, I'm happy to do it. But lasting change comes from shifting organizational power.