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Upgrading to Office
XP (the latest upgrade to the Office suite) will be good for your
work-life balance, and help you to combat the long hours culture,
according to Microsoft.
In a recent press release, Microsoft claimed
that
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60% of office workers would
prefer shorter working hours to a pay rise
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75% of workers think it is the
company's responsibility to enable shorter working hours
-
tests have shown that using
Office XP can make office workers more productive, saving up to an hour a
day
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this is equivalent to a benefit
to UK industry of £5 billion per year.
Microsoft is launching a
campaign over the summer called Club17:30 - that is, staff should make a
point of turning their computers off and leaving work at 5.30 pm over the
summer.
Computers, stress and
efficiency
The research indicates that
computer crashes and the time taken to learn new software are a source of frustration
and stress for knowledge workers. Who would disagree? XP, it is promised,
will be both more robust and more user-friendly, leading to both more job
satisfaction and more efficiency.
What Microsoft are saying is
that the software that 10 million people use in the UK will be more
efficient. This may be so. One would always hope an upgrade improves on
what it replaces. But it begs the bigger questions.
For a start, a key efficiency
problem with Microsoft Office products is that people use only a fraction
of their functionality. Is there any reason to think that this will be
different with the latest version?
But more than that, it is too
easy to look at software as a cause of inefficiencies in the workplace.
Tackling issues such as where and when work takes place, workplace design
and business processes are more likely to lead to substantial improvements
in efficiency - and the chance to leave work on time!
And, we might suggest, the very name "Club17:30"
suggests an archaic and inflexible approach to working culture. Just the
kind of thing that electronic working should make obsolete.
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