Between topics such as climate change and the 4-day week, the question currently arises: How contemporary is our way of working?
Climate crisis, digitalization, 4-day week: The world of work is currently experiencing a change, and new forms of working are being discussed around the world. Our planet should not be left out of consideration in all of this. Work researcher Hans Rusinek, author of “Work Survive Balance” (Herder Verlag), has also dealt with this same problem. In an interview with the news agency spot on news, he explains to what extent our working world needs to change in order to bring it into line with climate change. He also reveals what he believes an ideal working day should look like and how useful a 4-day week really is.
In your opinion, to what extent are we endangering our planet with our current way of working?
Hans Rusinek: In order to save the planet, we have to look at how we work on it. Only 100 companies are already responsible for 70 percent of emissions. If we build different products at work, handle resources differently and pay more attention to our emissions, then I see a huge lever. Climate activists take to the streets for the planet on Fridays, but overlook what we spend the rest of the week doing. And what opportunity there is in it. If we spend so much time at work, then we should also see it as a living laboratory for a future suitable for our grandchildren. There lies the potential for global connection, effectiveness and growing together, and thus the prerequisite for a learning, non-traumatizing and collaborative approach to the climate crisis, beyond coercion.
What do you think needs to change in the world of work as quickly as possible?
Rusinek: A discovery that really surprised me is the time factor. Our rushed approach to time is damaging both work and the planet. We’re not just rushing ourselves to ruin. It’s more likely to write emails on the weekend than to go to the movies on weekdays. Burnout rates are through the roof. It is this relentless rush that connects the depletion of our own resources, but also to the depletion of the planet’s resources. Because everything that lives, whether a manager or a mango plantation, needs regeneration. An up and down, not an always-on. As a result, we find ourselves caught in a frantic standstill when it comes to relearning the climate crisis; we simply don’t have the time or a clear mind to question things and do things differently. Because the glorification of “busyness” is a feature of work that primarily has a repressive function for our crises, because responsibility is a highly time-consuming practice, a central learning task for work suitable for grandchildren is the practice of time-appropriate work. More time for reflection, criticism, rethinking, doing things differently and doing things better.
What does an ideal working day look like for you?
Rusinek: In my book I show how we can learn what kind of chronotype we are: So what biorhythm we have throughout the day. There are dolphins, lions, bears and wolves. I am a lion, a born early riser: Lions have their strongest time in the morning, wake up quickly and full of energy, race after the gazelles, and then steadily lose weight, preferably with a gazelle in their stomach. Many companies, especially in the tech sector, now work with the knowledge of what chronotype you are, but also what chronotype your employee is and how work processes can be coordinated accordingly. This makes employees smarter, healthier and more attractive on the job market.
Artificial intelligence is currently on everyone’s lips. In your opinion, what opportunities does this offer for our everyday work?
Rusinek: It gives us the opportunity to ask ourselves again what MI actually was in contrast to AI, which is based on statistical methods. Human intelligence with its unique abilities for reflection, emotionality and taking responsibility. How revolutionary would it actually be if this MI were unleashed into our working world? We suffer from intelligence confusion, where AI scares us more than anything because we have forgotten what our intelligence would have to offer against it. For a meaningful future in which both intelligences are valued, it must be: Give to the machine what is to the machine and to man what is to man. So we have to demachinize our thinking and use AI as a machine helper for us, so that we have more time for the things that can only be done with MI: For example, critically addressing the question of what world our work will actually leave behind? But also: How could we get young talent interested? And motivate old hands? What is good feedback? And what really advanced products are?
How do we find a healthy perspective on our everyday work again?
Rusinek: One of the central dimensions of change for a better future of work is the body. In so-called knowledge work, i.e. work in offices and on computers, we have simply forgotten that we are bodies!
The idea that mind and body are fundamentally separate has been burned into our brains for centuries. Only thinking brings us closer to God, wrote the philosopher René Descartes. And in the office we also believe that only thinking can get us further. The result in today’s knowledge work in all areas: We are exhausted mental beings who see the body more as an adversary than as a teammate. Until he eventually rebels.
Research on “embodied cognition” can wonderfully show that better work is not a matter of the head, but rather a matter of the body, because we are thinking bodies!
The worst thing about the centuries-old separation of mind and body is that it is simply fundamentally wrong. Research shows how little thinking and feeling can be separated. The justifications we create when making decisions are often post-rationalizations for something we previously felt when we let it get to us. It’s not just weighing up arguments, but also processing and communicating feelings that makes us decision-makers.
There is currently a lot of discussion about the introduction of a 4-day week. Do you think that makes sense?
Rusinek: Not at any price: Studies show that in the short term, work in some areas does not suffer because we simply chat less at coffee machines or look out the window and therefore get just as much done. But what is the long-term effect of this consolidation of work? Coffee breaks and free exchanges with colleagues are important for our balance and perhaps even for the work itself in the end.
Another concern is that the world of work is becoming more and more divided: four-day weeks can usually only be afforded by well-paid laptop workers. For those who do really hard work for little money, for example in catering, construction or nursing, this “workplace revolution” will hardly be imaginable or affordable. I agree with Martin Luther King: It is only a real revolution if it is a revolution for everyone!