A new survey from Microsoft has shown that employers and their teams fundamentally disagree about productivity when working from home.
While 87% of employees or workers felt they worked as, or more efficiently from home – a whopping 80% of managers disagreed. The survey asked the question to more than 20,000 staff across 11 countries.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella told the BBC this tension needed to be resolved as workplaces were unlikely to ever return to pre-pandemic work habits.
“We have to get past what we describe as ‘productivity paranoia’ because all of the data we have that shows that 80% plus of the individual people feel they’re very productive – except their management thinks that they’re not productive.
“That means there is a real disconnect in terms of the expectations and what they feel.”
So how do you address this as an employer and how do you avoid the dreaded productivity paranoia
Provide clarity from the outset
We’re clear here at Yobah about the way we allow our team to work – we appreciate everyone has home lives and other responsibilities and so we aim to create a working life which is as flexible as possible, why do we do this? because if our team are happy, they will be more productive and by productive we don’t mean ‘spend more hours at their desk’ but we do mean creating valuable outcomes.
Does that mean working from home all of the time?
No, it doesn’t because ‘newsflash’ working from home doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s where some of the productivity paranoia kicks in, if you are a leader for whom ‘working from home’ doesn’t suit, you’re likely to adopt that thinking and project this view onto your own teams, but whilst you might be more productive or happier in the office, someone else might find that working from home – or somewhere else is far more productive for them. It’s not as cut and dried to simply say people are more productive in the office or less productive at home.
What’s productivity anyway?
It’s getting things done, isn’t it? Do we get things done at Yobah? absolutely yes. Do we all achieve them in the same 8-hour day in the same workspace, no we do not, does it matter – no it does not.
Everyone achieves what they’ve set out to do because they are working in an environment that makes them happy, that allows them to do focused work when they need to, take a break when they need to, and structure their day how it suits them. Not productive first thing? don’t work first thing then! get a burst of creativity at 9 pm – go for it.
Of course like any business we need our team available at certain times of the day, we have clients to deliver for, we’re clear about that too and we work together to ensure that we get done what is required.
It’s about trusting each other
Being paranoid about whether our employees are ‘not being productive’ because they’re not working in the same office that we are is a pretty futile exercise and given the amount of technology which is out there to manage time, manage communications and keep us all connected it’s easier than ever to create visibility in a hybrid working environment.
Of course, you must communicate clearly how you expect time to be managed and the ways in which it’s suitable for you as an organisation to work but beyond that, you have to trust that your team want to deliver for you, that people in the main want to do a good job, and if you can offer an opportunity to this in a way which is best for them you will be rewarded no doubt.