Few days in the American calendar evoke as much dread as the day we all switch over to Daylight Saving Time. Every year, we move our clocks forward an hour each spring and steal an hour of sleep from hard-working people who just ask to get a couple decent nights of sleep over the weekend. And no matter how many devices attach themselves to the cloud and automatically update, you’ll still be finding clocks you need to manually change for weeks to come. Clocks that require digging into a long-forgotten drawer for instructions to a 1993 Kenworth range to figure out.
And worse, literally no one knows why we even do this anymore:
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People like our own Elie Mystal and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern believe we should have Daylight Saving Time all the time. They are woefully misguided as what we should have is permanent standard time so we aren’t waking our asses up at what should be 5 a.m. People try to convince themselves that daylight saving time is a worthwhile endeavor because they conflate it with longer days, but that is more a function of astrophysics than chronology because the sun is up longer in the summer. More daylight is what you appreciate and no one’s day is going to be improved because the sun is up from 7:16 a.m. to 5:37 p.m. or 8:16 a.m. to 6:37 p.m. isn’t going to stave off any mid-winter woes. Stern even tries to wave away the permanent DST problem of forcing kids to wait for buses in pitch darkness by saying schools shouldn’t begin until 8:30 a.m. Well, guess what? Under the tyranny of permanent daylight saving time that would still require hopping on a bus in pitch blackness.
In any event, until we end the scourge of daylight saving, Dentons has the right idea. Last week, the firm announced that as part of its Wellness for Life program, it will give employees back the DST hour by paying them for it. Employees are being encouraged to leave early, come in late, take a long walk at lunch, and finish that book or podcast:
As part of its innovative multifaceted Wellness for Life initiative, “Daylight Savings — lose an hour and gain an hour,” launches today in which the Firm emphasized that weekends and off hours are a critical time for lawyers and staff to recharge and re-energize.
“Our business and profession is all about talent, and we are committed to continuously building a healthy work environment,” said US CEO Mike McNamara. “Our lawyers and staff work incredibly hard, and losing an hour of weekend time struck us as an opportunity to give something back to them, just as they give to each other and our clients every day. Our culture is centered around innovation, so we are asking our colleagues to be creative with how they personally decide to use this time.”
Good for Dentons. We have a love-hate relationship with wellness programs — obviously it’s important to try to improve the tough working conditions that go along with Biglaw, but many possible solutions are more hokey than concrete. But this is a solid proposal. Forfeit one billable hour to the cause of keeping employees up to the task and allow a little more time for them to adjust to this brutal new reality. Hopefully other firms are watching.
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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.