WSJ: More Employees Embrace ‘Microshifting,’ Carving Their Workday Into Chunks

After working traditional hours for more than 20 years, John D. Connolly realized that wasn’t how he worked best.

“I’d be dialed in, looking at the computer for six hours but I wouldn’t have any more gas in me,” says Connolly, 46. “I’d have to sit there for another 2½ hours.”

Connolly, founder of financial-services advisory firm Bifrost Advisors, works at home before his toddler wakes up, takes a break to have breakfast with the family, and works for about four hours before lunch with his wife. He resumes work around 4 p.m. and continues until dinner, often returning to finish things up after his son is in bed. He puts in work on the weekends, when necessary.

He is among the workers who have embraced “microshifting,” or carving their day into short chunks of work, with intentional breaks for family time or personal replenishment. While employees who work from home have long squeezed personal business into the workday—with or without the boss’s blessing—more are now openly working at the times when they are most productive, often in segments of several hours, and some companies are encouraging it.

Indeed, Connolly began working in microshifts at his previous job at Woozle Research, where he was head of marketing. His former boss at the company, a research platform serving institutional investors, encouraged employees to work at the times that were best for them.

“Instead of forcing everyone into a rigid schedule, we focus on output and deliverables,” says Woozle founder Mark Pacitti, who is based in Glasgow, Scotland, and works in two-hour microshifts himself. “If someone does their best, deep research work in a focused five-hour window, that’s more valuable to us and our clients than eight hours of diminishing returns.”

Where and when

Covid’s work-from-home requirement demonstrated that employees can work successfully from anywhere, without a boss watching over them all of the time. Now, flexibility increasingly means giving employees more control over when they work, not just where, which has made microshifting a buzzy work style, particularly in outcome-oriented businesses where results are more important than time spent at a desk.

While there is little data on microshifting, it is more likely to be prevalent in industries where flexible work arrangements already are common, such as IT, financial services and professional and technical services, says Anita Williams Woolley, associate dean of research and professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon University.

People who have caregiving responsibilities at home—for children or other relatives—are more likely to try microshifting than non-caregivers, according to a recent report on the state of hybrid work from Owl Labs, a company that sells videoconferencing technology. The report found that 72% of caregivers are interested in microshifting compared with 28% of non-caregivers.

Artificial-intelligence scheduling programs that enable even in-person service employees, such as those who work at restaurants or retailers, to schedule several shorter shifts in a day are likely helping drive the trend, says Williams Woolley.

For example, restaurant workers might schedule shifts in between when they have to drop off and pick up children from school, and then use the AI scheduler to find chunks of time afterward when they are available to work and the restaurant needs staff.

“Accommodating the changing needs and preferences of employees in a high-turnover industry is a complex optimization problem that has been challenging, even for sophisticated software to solve,” said Williams Woolley.

AI also has helped accelerate the microshift movement by taking over lower-level tasks that keep people chained to their desks during specific hours, such as sorting and responding to emails. That frees up people for higher-level work, the kind that requires more concentration and can be done when employees know they can be most productive.

If done correctly, microshifting prevents burnout. “When you’re trying to solve really difficult problems, you can only push for so long,” said Williams Woolley.

Whitney Munro, founder of a boutique consulting firm, has long known that when she works in three- to four-hour chunks with intentional breaks designed to incorporate movement and household chores, she produces her best work.

Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal.