In Taiwan, sometimes the government mandates certain Saturdays or Sundays as “make up workdays.” If you get off Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for Lunar New Year, for example, you may have to come in next Sunday, because five days of straight vacation for the working class causes physical illness to the Taiwanese billionaires forced to witness it.

Though the government advises which of these days should be “make up workdays” (and there are some legal ramifications in terms of mandated overtime pay and etc), there’s no legal obstacle to just giving people that day off. Therefore as a boss, it’s entirely your decision whether you follow through, and make people come in on a Saturday or Sunday.

If you choose to have them come in, you are a Bad Boss.

Ethically, You are a Bad Boss

Let’s start with the most important reason, and if you’re a boss, the reason you genuinely don’t care about. So, I put it at the top, so you have to scroll past it to get to the business reasons why it’s bad to make people come in on a make up workday. Then you’re working hard to ignore ethics, a situation you should find quite comfortable and familiar :)

Workers are the reason you make money. Let’s be honest, you became a boss so you don’t have to work as much and can still have a nice car. Yeah yeah, if you founded your own business, at the beginning you were working long nights, investing your own money, sure, I’ve been a founder, I’ve been there, I get it, it’s not easy. However, now you have employees, and they have no ownership in your company. Every penny of profit they earn goes directly into your pocket, not theirs. Every bit of extra hard work they do is to make you more rich.

Tautologically, without your employees, you have no means to run your business. If that wasn’t true, you obviously wouldn’t have those employees, because they’d be a waste of money.

Therefore, they deserve your utmost respect. Yes, you pay them, but that’s table stakes. Everyone has to get paid. Even if you pay them very well, you still can’t scream at them, or degrade them, everyone knows that, because it’d be disrespectful (well, MOST bosses know that). Clearly, just paying them isn’t enough, respect for them and their time is also necessary.

Asking them to come in on a weekend is disrespectful. They give you the vast majority of the time in their life to make you money, and you ask for another day? On a weekend, which is normally one of their only chances to relax and pursue their own interests?

That’s disrespectful and unethical.

Financially, You are a Bad Boss

I mentioned money, so all the bosses that scrolled past ethics are now paying a lot of attention.

Turning the lights on in the office costs money. The air conditioning costs money. Flushing toilets costs money. Normally, it doesn’t matter, because the productivity of having employees in the office far outweighs the cost. That’s true for every single day… except make up workdays.

If it isn’t obvious to you that productivity is near 0 on make up workdays, you aren’t just a bad boss, you’re blind. On the Sunday you drag everyone into the office, productivity is so low you’re barely making enough to cover the cost of flushing the toilets. Not to mention the fact that productivity will be low the entire week after, because it will be an abnormally long week that will cause exhaustion and resentment. Furthermore, employees will know they have 6 days to get things done that week, so naturally they will take 6 days to get things done.

If you didn’t do a make up workday, you would have at minimum the same productivity for that stretch of two weeks as you would if you did do the make up workday… but more likely, you’d have higher productivity if you gave them the day off.

Don’t take my word for it, just listen to Forbes. Study after study shows that within reason, less time at the office means more productivity. This includes both taking vacation times and having lower than 40 hour workweeks. People don’t get 40 hours of work done in 40 hours (or 60), they get about 20-28 hours of work done, and spend the rest of the time padding their time. Having people work less means you get more done, faster.

Management-wise, You are a Bad Boss

I mentioned resentment earlier, so let’s focus on that: a good boss knows they have to balance the emotions of their employees against their productivity. You already know (some of you do, anyway) that if you ask people to stay late too much, they’ll hate your guts, and eventually leave. Most of you have enough management instincts to avoid pushing people to their limits, leading to high turnover, poor productivity, or worse case, an employee running you over with their car. Actually, even worse case, the employees unionizing.

Asking people to come in on a weekend pisses them off, plain and simple. You get little to no productivity in return for a room of people that aren’t happy with you. Good job, great leadership, truly you are a visionary and master of human relationships.

Opportunity Cost-wise, You are a Bad Boss

When I chat about this with other business owners, I can’t believe how not a single one thought of this: despite the absurdity of the make up workday, if you give people that day off, it’s like you’re giving them an extra vacation day. The government has handed you a gift on a silver platter that all of you are ignoring.

I’ve demonstrated how there’s basically no upside to having people come in on a make-up workday. You get no productivity in return, only resentment and in fact probably reduced productivity. So, if you give people that day off, you’re sacrificing nothing. And in return, you get higher productivity the following week, higher morale, greater respect for you as a leader, and a greater appreciation for working at your company. It’s the ultimate king’s bargain, and none of you are offering it to your employees! It truly boggles my mind. For absolutely no cost to you, you get to be a hero to your employees. You get to appear selfless. Remarkable how few the number of bosses is that takes advantage of this gift.

What if I want Ultimate Productivity?

There’s an upper limit to productivity in employees, no matter how much you pay them (or force them to come in on weekends). At the end of the day, they will walk away rather than work 16 hour days for weeks on end, like you did when you first started your business. The way to unlock real productivity is staring you in the face, as you reflect on the early days of your business: ownership.

The only way to maximize productivity is to give your employees ownership in the company. Actual real legal and financial stakes in the outcome of the business. It’s an unbeatable incentive structure that doesn’t deal only with money, but the psychological effects of feeling personally responsible for a thing you own.

Even Gary Vaynerchuk, the weird little gremlin capitalist that so many other business owners I talk to love to watch on tik tok, admits this.

Silicon Valley companies have understood this for the last 30 years, that’s why they always offer employees stock options, and for startups, RSUs. The real smart cookies take it one step further: co-ops.

A co-op is a business structure where every employee is a part owner. It’s the ultimate co-ownership structure, where everyone is busting ass to ensure success.

Co-ops are more productive, more profitable, more resilient, and more sustainable than traditional companies. So why don’t more businesses form as co-ops? Because while all co-op members are doing quite well, none of them can afford a Lamborghini, maybe?

I’m not sure, but I like to run my businesses on evidence-based methods, and so I formed my software engineering consultancy, 508.dev as a co-op, and I can say that in nearly 10 years in the industry, I’ve never seen a more productive group of engineers!

So, stop being a Bad Boss, follow the science, and stop making people come in on make up workdays!