Johnny 1

Johnny

UCLA

LA, California.

19/08/2021.

The Founder and Chief Executive Officer,

Tower Paddle Boards Company,

1010 Santa Clara PI, San Diego, CA 92109, United States.

Dear Stephan Aarstol,

Being happy in life means fully enjoying your work and having time to be with family and friends. In the modern business world, this remains a dream for most employees and hating what we do or where we work is a popular trend in our society. The few who enjoy their work are usually also very productive, and these are the employees that businesses want to find and retain. Notably, happy employees significantly increase an organization’s productivity. On the contrary, unhappy employees are less committed and only put in a bit of effort to avoid being rejected. Perhaps, unhappy employees could significantly sabotage the a department or even an entire organization. For leaders and managers, this necessitates the adoption of policies that would enhance employee happiness. The importance of your book “The Five Hour Workday” to entrepreneurs is undeniable great. It establishes a well-defined link between employee happiness and productivity through a five-hour workday (Parker-Pope np).

First, the book gives an explicit history of work from the stone age era to the modern information age to establish a strong background of the text. For instance, during the stone age, the book mentions that community members didn’t differentiate between work and leisure like we do today. Further, it affirms this by stating that there were no words in their language that could differentiate the two. And fewer working hours and the absence of formal rules is what you found interesting about work during this era (Aarstol 48). As the book portrays, since this era, the definition of work has changed over the years. Moving into the industrial era and onwards, work began to be seen as the major responsibility of humans. People started working for more than eight hours, with some working for up to twelve hours. Sadly, the increment in working hours did not replicate in wages, salaries, or even the working environment. The employees continued to work in a hostile environment and for low wages. Significantly, this demotivated the workforce and led to employee absenteeism and turnover, as the book reports. According to the book, these two factors perhaps have the most significant impact on employee productivity.

Look at the challenge that organizations face when an important employee quits. In such a situation, an organization spends much time and money searching for a new person, interviewing, training, and managing them to become the kind of employee they want, according to your the book. Someone else has to cover the former employee’s responsibility in the meantime, which significantly impacts other processes or departments. This is most of the time costly for organizations, explaining why retaining good employees is one of the most important yet challenging responsibilities of business leadership and management.

In the book, Ford Motor Company is used as an example to explain the link between working hours and productivity. When the company was beginning, it took the employee twelve and half hours to build the Ford’s Flagship Model T car. Later, with the adoption of a new assembly line, the book reports that cars were being manufactured much faster than the initial time. With new technologies, the company could eventually manufacture a car in about one and half hours. Considerably, the number of hours the employees spend on a car was reduced, and productivity increased. As the book suggests, the Ford Motor Company changed the American workday hours. The company reduced the workday hours to eight hours per day while at the same time paying higher wages to its employees (Aarstol 54). It also reduced the previous workweek length from six days to five days while maintaining the same wages. Using this strategy, the company managed to group its employees into three shifts, increasing the company’s productivity like never before. In the interview review in the book, Henry Ford, the founder, talks of Americans’ quality of life deficiencies. Henry mentions that Americans have become too focused on making money and not the true quality of life. He suggests that the United States has become a poor nation when it comes to education, happiness, family time, and even more. Henry believes Americans are less happy, more stressed, and depressed. This is why a vast majority of Americans are overweight or obese, unhealthy, and more substance abusers.

After the industrial age, the book moves to the present age, which it describes as the information age. In this era, the book suggests that with the help of new technologies, employees are capable of displaying high performance and giving productive work in two to three hours. Many of the employees are already aware of this but lack the motivation to achieve it. Perhaps, the current workday and workweek policies allow employees to spread out their work to fill the stated workday hours. Notably, this realization is what made you adopt the new policy direction of “the five-hour workday” as the CEO of the Tower Paddle Boards Company. The policy direction significantly motivated the company’s employees since they had enough time to meet their families and friends and relieve work stress. Undeniably, this made them happy employees, and they brought energy to the workplace, increasing the company’s productivity. As a result, the company rose the ladder, becoming one of the most growing companies in the United States. Indeed, “it is our society, corporations and institutions that have driven us down a path that really wasn’t our choice when it comes to working for forty hours or more every week. Besides, the societies working for longer hours are the least well off when it comes to quality of life (Aarstol 128).

The book targets people in the business industry, both employees and employers, across the United States. It gives an important piece of information that would also benefit college students and the rest of American society. Current students will comprise the next employees’ and employers’ generation. They need to be natured in the right way to be able to balance effectively between work and other important aspects of human life, such as spending time with family. The book needs to target this audience as well since they carry the culture to the next generation and the generation to come. There are other American workers who are neither employers nor employees, and this knowledge to balance between what they do and integral parts of human life. Besides, long working hours are not the key to productivity. Happiness is the key to work that results in increased productivity. If everyone loves what they are doing, they will be productive.

According to research reports, many employees are depressed or simply unhappy with their jobs in the United States today than a few decades ago. A vast majority of Americans are wealthy, but some are unhappy as they do not enjoy what they are doing (Parker-Pope np). During the Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776, the founding father committed to promoting certain unalienable rights, that among them was the right to pursue happiness (Aarstol 50). However, happiness is not there, and although Americans are working for long hours, this doesn’t match their productivity in various organizations where they are employed. College students will definitely follow this path if not advised accordingly. “The Five Hour Workday” book could possibly be an effective reference material if it is written to also include college students as the target audience. As the book establishes, there is an undeniable link between employee happiness and productivity. And one way to improve employee happiness is by adopting reasonable working hours. With today’s technology, people can work for a few hours and still achieve maximum productivity. The remaining hours of the day, they can enjoy life with their families or friends, engage in recreational activities, and get enough sleep, which significantly improves their health and quality of life in the broad sense.

In conclusion, employee happiness is an integral element that business organizations should embrace to improve employee performance and productivity. Notably, businesses that have adopted considerably longer working hours have not seen this replicate itself in the employee’s productivity. As you suggest, this could be a result of employees being unhappy at the workplace or with their work. Therefore, leaders and managers in various organizations should redefine the roles and responsibilities they assign their employees and adopt reasonable working hours that will enable workers to enjoy life in and outside the workplace. College students who are future employees, leaders, and managers also need to understand the importance of employee happiness in business performance and productivity. In general, everyone should realize that happiness is the key to success and not the other way round.

Yours sincerely,

Johnny Ji

Works Cited

Aarstol, Stephan. “The Five Hour Workday: Live Differently, Unlock Productivity, and Find Happiness.” Lioncrest Publishing, 2016.

Parker-Pope, Tara. “How to Be Happy.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/guides/well/how-to-be-happy

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