Should working efficiency counted on to time spent in office by an employee as his or her contribution in to work? This question timely keep bouncing in my head. In my opinion, if work is counted in terms of achievements or in terms of things completed in whatever time length, instead of the amount of time spent in the office, would nurture better productivity and quality. When someone work efficiently he/she would expect to complete some part of it, and most probably complete it. However, longer hours in office, most of the time builds a mindset to work with comfortable pace(which is also quite variable), as there is no worry to "personal deadline", and induces laziness in individual's working style. It may also diminish the chances of applying effective working method to finish the job as there is no hard line, also a possible indication of low personal commitment.
This may not be true in each and every cases as some time amount of work requires high efficiency with longer working hours. Though indirectly,Working time flexibility also encourages or enforces longer office hours. For example, certain task requires cooperative efforts and consensus of the more then one person. In this case flexible timing may lower their chances of cooperative efforts, unless some of them sacrifice longer stays. These flexible working hours may also blur start and end of the office hours, and most of the time the span is stretched then normal.
So, encouraging efficient working methods and fixed working hours can definitely make workplace and employee better over dampening long hours.
