Only 10 per cent of us work best in the morning so why should they dictate working patterns, writes ANNA CAREY
IMAGINE A world without alarm clocks. A world where you could choose to work when you were at your most productive. A world where the results of your labours were what counted, not how long you spent at your desk. Sounds idyllic? If Danish activist and entrepreneur Camilla Kring is right, it may be the future for all of us.
She’s the founder of B-Society, an organisation with more than 8,000 members in 50 countries, which aims to create a more flexible world. “We all have different forms of family, different ways of working, different biological rhythms,” says Kring.
“But society only supports the ‘A-Persons’, who work best from nine-to-five. I really think we need a revolution in the way we organise society so we can support diversity in the way we work and live.” This new society would include schools, childcare facilities and universities running on later schedules.
B-Society is based on the fact that every human being has their own individual body clock determined by a group of about 10,000 nerve cells in our brains called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SNC). Each person’s clock is unique, and it’s generally agreed that some people’s cycles mean that they wake up and feel ready to work in the early morning, while others wake up slightly later, take longer to become fully alert and perform best in the afternoon and evening.
It’s estimated that 10 per cent of people are classic morning A-People, while another 10 per cent are evening B-People; most of us are in-between. B-People don’t come alive after dark – the difference in body clocks is just a few hours, and most Bs are working at peak power by the late morning or early afternoon. But that can make a difference when society is structured around the sleep patterns of classic A-People, who are the minority. We’re all expected to get up early, be in work by 9am, and start slogging straight away.
“B-People are often accused of being lazy,” says Kring. “Early-up and early-to-bed is part of our culture.”
But it doesn’t have to be this way. “We can change our society so that we work when we are peaking mentally. If you are a B-Person it doesn’t make sense to start working first thing in the morning.” And it may not make sense to just sit at your desk for a certain time whether you’re working well or not. Today’s work culture seems to value presence in the office over productivity, something Kring wants to change.
In 2005 she founded Super Navigators, which works with businesses to create less rigid, more employee-centric work environments through a programme called “life navigation”.
“Our industrial work culture says that, if I can see you, then you are working and, if I don’t, then you are not working,” she sighs. “The idea that we all have to work during the same time period in the same place has been [transferred] from the factory to the office. It made sense with industrial factory work but not when we’re talking about innovation, ideas, creativity.”
Kring’s ideas have already spread to Ireland. In 2008 the Citywest branch of international pharmaceutical company Abbott introduced a life navigation programme. Employees attended five half-day sessions designed by Kring to encourage them to prioritise their work-life balance, to respect and create individualised working schedules and methods. The results are impressive. There’s been a marked increase in employees working from home or to a flexible schedule, employee turnover has reduced by more than half, and internal surveys show that staff morale has greatly increased.
So is this really the future of work? Kring is optimistic. She believes that we haven’t yet explored the full potential of the technology that enables flexible working.
“We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “At the moment we just build the new ways of working on top of the old ways – a lot of people work nine-to-five and then go home and do more work via e-mail. They haven’t yet learned that if you work in the evening you should take the morning off. But they will. It’s the beginning of a huge revolution.”
IN ITS “10 Commandments” B-Society calls “for a better world where a diversity of daily rhythms is acknowledged and respected, giving us the opportunity for a better quality of life, more productive working time and major socio-economic gains once we no longer take up the same space on the same roads at the same time”.
Working on the presumption that not all young people have the same rhythms to their day, since 2007, Danish high school HF-Centret Efterslægten has been providing its classes on a parallel “B-schedule”.
