We’ve already talked about the loneliness of remote employees (What the loneliness of some remote workers really tells us), and about creating connections between employees , which is a more complex subject than it seems (People are back in the office? So what?), and now it’s time to talk about the chestnut of productivity.
Unlike Amazon, Google is continuing down the path of telecommuting, but is brandishing the scarecrow of productivity as a condition for maintaining the measure:
“According to Cassey, there are no plans to change Google’s three-day in-office policy, although Pichai stressed that maintaining productivity on work-from-home days is crucial for this policy to remain in place.” (Want employees to return to office? Give them a reason to do so)
But before I go any further, I’d like to make it clear that I’m neither 100% pro nor anti telecommuting: for me, depending on the context of a given person and company, the ideal percentage of remote working for that person ranges from 0 to 100% and is to be constantly reassessed (Why does an employee want or need to work remotely?). So I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all policies that apply to everyone all the time.
Productivity: a good argument that can be used to say whatever you want.
I was astonished not so long ago that companies were bringing out this argument when they were telling us the opposite at the end of the COVID episode.
Granted, the term “productivity” isn’t explicitly mentioned, but it’s impossible not to think that it’s implicit.
But overall, there isn’t a single study that doesn’t point in this direction.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, workers’ and employers’ perceptions of productivity varied according to sector and type of task. Numerous studies show that teleworking was often perceived as more productive than expected, especially in knowledge-intensive sectors. A survey by the Boston Consulting Group of 12,000 employees in several countries revealed that most workers felt they had maintained or even improved their productivity by working remotely. Of the employees surveyed, around 75% thought they were as productive or more productive when working remotely, thanks in particular to the elimination of commuting and the ability to concentrate more on complex tasks (Survey Shows Employees Felt Surprisingly Productive During COVID-19).
On the employer side, around 60% of managers felt that their teams’ productivity was also improved by teleworking. However, some employers voiced concerns about the loss of collaboration, worker isolation, and the difficulty of maintaining a strong corporate culture in an entirely virtual environment. (Teleworking is not going anywhere – here’s why).
Let’s face it, not everyone has benefited equally. There were major disparities between industries. For example, some sectors, such as low-value-added services, saw productivity declines, particularly among employees with inadequate telecommuting configurations or communication problems. On the other hand, employees in technological or creative professions often saw productivity gains due to greater autonomy and a flexible work environment (same source).
I see this above all as a question of work content: in the absence of intrinsic motivation for your low-value-added tasks , extrinsic motivation is used , more commonly referred to as pressure and micro-management.
I don’t see it so much as a problem of productivity as of tasks that should no longer be entrusted to humans who don’t like them anyway.
Nobody measures productivity
But the real problem with the productivity argument is that, as the name of all these studies shows, we’re in the realm of perception.
Why is this? By definition, we’re talking about teleworkable professions, i.e. knowledge workers, and this is the only type of worker whose productivity we can’t measure.
Peter Drucker, often referred to as the father of modern management, recognized early on the growing importance of knowledge workers, whose productivity is essential to modern economies. In his view, the productivity of knowledge workers is fundamentally different from that of workers in traditional industry. He describes it as more difficult to measure , because it is not simply a question of quantity of production, but of quality, innovation and decision-making.
Drucker insists that the productivity of knowledge workers depends largely on their autonomy and ability to manage their own work. Unlike manual workers, who follow repetitive processes, knowledge workers have to solve complex problems, often creatively. To improve their productivity, he suggests giving them the freedom to structure their work, and encouraging a results-based approach rather than a time-based one (Remote work imposes a result-oriented culture and In the future of work the result is watched and nothing else).
A knowledge worker is productive when he does what is expected of them, makes good decisions and solves the problems he fasce. As long as the level of expectation is realistic and is not intended to catch him at fault , nothing can be measured, only observed.
We’re dealing with a population whose productivity we can’t measure, so we’re pushing them too hard without understanding their work (Knowledge workers, the excluded from operational excellence?)…in return, they’re asking for more work-life balance, which we take to mean disengagement that we hope to compensate with micromanagement.
“some knowledge workers are reassessing the importance of work-life balance and resisting efforts to increase their workload. In response to the phenomenon of disengagement at work, some managers have increased their level of supervision, calling for more meetings and in-person gatherings. As a result, many knowledge workers feel that their productivity has suffered and that they are being micromanaged.” (The Future of Knowledge Work: What Drucker can teach us).
Exactly the opposite of what needs to be done: instead of better management, we’re imposing micro-management.
Ordering a fundamental turnaround on the basis of an impossible-to-measure indicator presents us with an insoluble problem: since we can’t measure the impact of telecommuting on productivity, we won’t be able to measure the impact of returning to the office either.
This is either arbitrary or the “Hippo” rule (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion).
In no way does it satisfy my taste for rationality and transparency in decision-making.
Individual and collective productivity
I highlighted the fact that remote working did not create any new problems, but merely highlighted existing dysfunctions (Remote work: a mirror of the organizations’ weaknesses.).
Among these dysfunctions I can’t fail to highlight the inability of companies and employees to collaborate and use the digital collaboration tools that are indispensable in our daily lives today, a fortiori when teleworking (Digital Infobesity: When Collaboration Tools Degrade Productivity, QWL and Amplify Mental Workload). It’s more a question of misuse of tools, which also amplifies the shortcomings of both sides in terms of communication and management (The “remote manager”, weak link in remote work).
A group of people can be productive individually, but made less productive collectively by collaborative practices and management.
A real solution would be to look at how we define use cases (Are you really ready for all cases of remote working ?), train people, work on the posture of managers and leaders at a distance (Management in the future of work: digital leadership and systemic approach to management).
Would be. But companies refuse to learn from the COVID episode, and are content with a more reassuring return to normality that avoids calling a lot of things into question. Let’s just pray that we don’t have to realize at a COVID-30 that we’ve learned absolutely nothing, that no consequences have been drawn, and that we don’t find ourselves facing the same problems that were primarily organizational and managerial in nature.
Bringing people back to the office won’t solve these problems, but it will help to make the shortcomings of some people less visible and less of a problem, and these are the very people who are campaigning for a return to the office.
Bottom line
When we talk about telecommuting productivity, we’re invoking an unmeasurable quantity about people who need autonomy, and whose work we can’t understand or formalize.
This makes any discussion of the subject impossible, because without any tangible basis, it can be used to justify anything.
Meanwhile, the real causes of productivity problems – management and the use of collaborative tools – are the elephant in the room.
Image: telecommuting productivity by Djavan Rodriguez via Shutterstock
