The emancipation of labour: The 7-dayweekend

World stare uncomprehendingly at the Brazilian company manager Semco, a very broad-based services company that operates from industrial equipment to post solutions in various fields: What's happening there, contradicts all of what they believe. The 3000 employees select their supervisors to determine their own working hours and salaries. There are no business plans, no personnel department, almost no hierarchy. All profits will be shared by vote, the salaries and all business records are available to all the emails for strictly private, and how much money the employee for business travel or their computer is up to you.

Respect as a recipe for success What may sound for today's hiring managers, as an anarchic nightmare is in fact a success story. Since the company was changed owner Ricardo Semler, profits rose from 35 million to $ 220 million. And not just the numbers agree with Semler, but especially the staff: The staff turnover rate at Semco is below one percent. The recipe is simple: Treat your employees like adults, they behave that way. The more freedom you give, the more productive, happier and more innovative they are.A company consists of equal adult human beings, not labor. Everyone has the right to express themselves freely and to find a healthy balance between work and private life. Contrary to what you seem to believe current, pressure and stress, make people non-productive, but easily breakable. And the company just as the man ultimately loses. It goes Semler to a new understanding of work: A company is a joint project, at best, a shared passion. The company has however taught us differently, we should as masons, painters and laborers can see, not as a cathedral-creator. At Semco, employees are an essential part of a whole, they are co-creators, not merely a cog in the system. You have ideas, they understand their work, they know what it's worth.

Trust rather than control But our hiring managers still believe that one must control employees, over time clocks, fixed working hours, productivity reports and eespionage. Semco has given up everything and replaced the control of trust - and seriously: Who really wants to work with people who can not be trusted? Semler for the delusions of control in most organizations is just crazy. His staff educate their children and choose governors, there are adults who know best what they want and need. "It's crazy, this idea that people are still so fixated on how something is done When we say no. 'You're five minutes late' or 'why this factory workers go to the bathroom again?' [...] If you look around you at Semco in the office are, as always plenty of empty seats, the question is. Where are these people I have not the slightest idea, and it does not interest me?. It does not interest me in the sense that I do not want to make sure that my staff get to work and give the company a certain number of hours per day. Who needs a certain number of hours per day? We need people who deliver a specific result. Sundays and Mondays are stay at home - four hours, eight hours or twelve hours in the office. It is irrelevant to me, "Semler said strangely plausible.

No hierarchy, but teams Semco is something that, according to the human image of today's managers may not even exist. And if they do, then it might not work. But it does. Three questions Semler hear again and again: Are you really doing this? Does it seriously? And: What now? The first two are easy to answer: "We do this now for 25 years, so almost everyone who is really interested in it, come here to see if it's true And our numbers are above reproach." Semler says confidently.

For him, the breakup of the company structure from the beginning, not pure fantasy, but rather the only possible answer to our inhuman world of work. He has learned the hard way, even woke up only when he collapsed and was rushed to a hospital in complete burnout. That was the point where he decided that his mental and physical health never be subordinated to the job - and also of his employees not to ask. That insanity should cease. "If one looks closely at it, has to be said that the traditional system is not working and that is the incentive to look for something else." - That simply does Semler das. But it lacks many entrepreneurs still struggling to let go of control. Because today's companies are not built as places of creation, but as the military, and recipients with a hierarchical power structure, with control devices. Semco, however, is built in concentric circles and permeable, there is no job titles, no fixed office. Nobody has to come to work, whether you work from home, from the jungle or a cafe on the beach promenade, the individual employees and teams to decide. These teams are the heart of Semco. People work in groups, each complete a product or an intermediate product by itself. How do they do it, what time and what money is their business. Who wants to sleep in between is simply in the garden and firms lies down for a few hours in the hammock - who gets tired, anyway, only errors.

The company without a personnel department Semco has 3000 employees, but no personnel department, because the traditional entrepreneur is in a cold sweat on his forehead. Who sets these people? Who will check the performance? The employees make everything ourselves Where a team that a new person is needed, she writes in the intranet of the company from an appropriate meeting. The course is voluntary: Everyone can come, no need.

"We do not want to be involved, someone in something that does not interest him, so all meetings voluntarily. This means that the meetings will be announced and who is interested, can and will come and will leave the moment the room again, if it begins to bore him, "said Semler, the meeting philosophy. People who go in the middle of a meeting, because it bores them - that would drive many a supervisor in the madness. But just at Semco, only the people make a decision and carry it directly concerns and interests. At such a meeting could be decided for example that new staff is needed and what he or she can be. Then, jointly written an ad, and once the applications are, they are split in the team: Everyone who wants to take, just a few home with you brings and then again with the most interesting. Instead of interviewing, there is a group interview with all candidates at the same time - may also come here who will. The only employees who are regularly evaluated formally are those in decision-making positions - and all of the other. One of these managers should get repeated bad reviews, he usually goes by itself

Peer pressure In fact, almost everything under control, the teams themselves. Makes someone a good job, then the discussion in the team, or convene a meeting. Anyone who assigns a high salary, thus increasing the expectations of the team and the pressure to perform. But the employees have become a different relationship to work: If anyone deserves a lot of money, the whole week really only plays golf, but still does a good job and do their work - who cares? What counts is the result. A study by CNN noted that employees at Semco have a much healthier balance between work and private life, to take more time for relationships, children and hobbies, but also simultaneously show unusually high level of commitment and remarkable achievements in the profession. Not despite but because of the freedoms. For Semler is not surprising: People need to develop to their full potential to bring.

And it works Semler is certain: His concept works everywhere. He himself has used in factories as well as in IT offices. In fact, it's actually the other way around it works at all that way. Our current work with their burn-out syndromes, with bullying, stress, depression and stomach ulcers, namely, does not, she's continued insanity. It is time that we create a society that is in the profession again associated with calling and passion, not with slavery and exploitation. In the newly free people make decisions and can be treated with respect. In private life and work are equivalent - for the supervisor. It is time for the 7-day-weekend!

By Ricardo Semmler, several books have been published including: "The Seven-Day Weekend: A Better Way to Work in the 21st Century" and "The Semco system: management without a manager."