Back in the early days of the penal colony settlement in Australia, it was discovered that convicts would work harder and better if they could knock off when they had finished the day’s work. Those who finished by lunch time could do paid work for someone. Or they could just muck around or grow a vegetable garden.

This contravened (British) law. Convicts weren’t allowed to earn money! Convicts were suppposed to work from sun up to sun down and be miserable. So they stopped ‘task work’ and made them stay all day. Quality and quantity of work dropped off. Funny about that.

Humans need to have control of their day in order to feel that they are ‘creative individuals’ rather than ‘drones’ and ‘worker ants’.

If managers don’t understand this, they will never get the most out of their staff. Good managers appreciate – bad managers enslave people for their own amusement.

I think the higher up they go, the meaner and madder they get. Personally, I don’t fancy climbing that ladder. There’s nothing at the top.

So he thinks through the employer’s needs and designs a system that will meet or exceed the needs of his employer. He then implements this system successfully.

This personality type does not tolerate well the usual managing style where the manager firstly wants power over his/her staff and about fourthly? wants production. Albert is willing to sell his skills to his employer but is Not willing to sell his soul to be lorded over by someone who has bullying tendances. Needless to say, most organizations do not value the Alberts, even if they are the better performers.

I like some of the creative comments already made on this site for successfully managing the Albert’s. Everyone is different and managers who figure out what motivates different employees and do that, then the organization will also benefit greatly.

Instead, most managers unwittingly DEmotivate their employees by refusing to reward good, hard work. In fact, managers effectively slow their hard workers down. Why work hard for 40 hours straight when there are no benefits for doing so? When the Albert’s begin to realise they are pushing themselves for nothing (their mates are being paid the same wages and take it much easier), management will find the Alberts either becoming much more like Jane and John Doe, or leaving entirely as others have suggested for more entrepreneurial pursuits.

I first met Albert 25 years ago when he was a mainframe software debugger. I’ll simplify the story to keep it short(-ish). He could take a 12 inch thick operating system core dump and skim through it and find any problem within minutes. That’s all he did. That’s all he wanted to do. All his previous managers had pulled out their hair trying to get him to do more. I offered to put him on permanent call out. Just come in when we have a problem and I’ll pay you per call. It worked. His co-workers were happy because he didn’t sit around refusing to do anything else, I was happy because we were clearing the really tough problems fast and he was happy because he made better money than a straight salary. After I left the group the incoming manager put him back on a regular regime … and he left.

I’ve had an Albert in most of my teams since then.. and happily managed them. I’ve also had the other extreme too and managed them too. People are people. If you treat them as individuals they deliver the best they can. Their methods vary.

I have yet to understand why more businesses don’t trust their employees more and allow them to work from home/other locations, or allow them to leave whenever they’re finished for the day. Of course there will always be more work to do the next day, but as far as daily productivity, there is only so long one can focus before distraction sets in.

By the time I leave at five, my eyes are aching and I feel tired and sluggish. If I were able to work in shorter bursts or to really buckle down for four straight hours and take off, not only would I be more efficient because of the shorter strain on my concentration, but I’d be motivated by the reward of going home earlier to enjoy the rest of my day.

People who can accomplish the goals set forth by their managers in a shorter amount of time should be paid as much as their less competent peers. It sounds harsh, but it happens everywhere. You buy a better video card for your computer and pay more because it’s faster and does the job better than your old one. You pay more for a gourmet meal than a hamburger because its quality is higher and more mastery was put into its preparation. I hope someday I won’t be stuck feeling obligated to stay as late as everyone else. I’m ready to go home now!

Q: “But is it [i]possible?[/i]”

A: Not in a way that you’d want to be associated with.

My reaction to the situation would be, “How can we make better use of Albert’s skills and abilities?” If, after 5 years, Albert is still so unchallenged that he completes his work in half the time allocated, he deserves to get work more suited to his skill level. My biggest fear is that someone else would offer Albert more challenging work and he would leave.

Can Albert teach the rest of the staff how to complete their work more efficiently? Why settle for one Albert when he might be to train a lot of almost Alberts? What more difficult work could be channelled Albert’s way that would make better use of his skills.

It would make no sense to keep Albert Einstein working in a patent office for 20 efficient hours a week, if he could be working as a physicist instead. Find work better suited to Albert’s abilities and both you and Albert will appreciate it.

There is, however, something nagging me. It goes back to cases where almost all team members are working overtime to make a schedule. One person isn’t working overtime. That person has to care for a dying parent. This works for a while, but eventually the 60-hour-a-week people resent the 40-hour-a-week person with the dying parent.

I guess the 40-hour-a-week people will come to resent Albert, and the total team effort will drop.

I think Albert’s situation would work if he were an outside consultant. I have been in situations where we had an outside consultant who worked a few days a week, produced tons of work, and no body minded.

I am not sure why people don’t mind a consultant who works 20 hours but do mind a fellow employee who works 20 hours. Doesn’t make sense to me, but it seems to be that way.

How do you know that Albert is actually twice as good as the others – maybe he just got lucky on getting easy objectives? Maybe he is very good at saying things like “That’s a DBA issue, you are wasting my time” and in fact the rest of the team are carrying him?

The reason the people are wary of Albert is that the perception of fairness is paramount in managing, and unless you are doing piecework then unfortunately hours worked is one of the fairest measures of effort.