The debate raging about remote work and the return to the office is interesting because it allows us to question the various arguments put forward and, why not, wonder if the problem lies elsewhere.
We’ve already seen that going back to the office to create connections between people is questionable, to say the least (People are back in the office? So what?), others have shown that it’s possible to create and sustain a business culture at a distance (The Myth of the ‘Missing’ Remote Work Culture) and, as far as productivity is concerned (Remote Working productivity: myth or reality? What companies refuse to admit), we need to be able to measure it.
Today, I’d still like to talk about remote workers productivity, but I’d like to go a step further and propose some concrete solutions.
The remote worker is a knowledge worker like any other
The remote worker is, by definition, a knowledge worker, and talking about his or her productivity brings us back to a debate that is at least 50 years old, a debate that has failed to produce an answer for one main reason: managers and executives who are unable to adapt their mental model to this new worker.
Productivity is a simple concept, a ratio between a result expressed in quantity produced and the means required to produce it expressed in time or money.
A model that works well as long as the value produced is a function of the quantity produced: all you have to do is produce more per unit of time to create more value.
But it doesn’t work with knowledge workers, who not only produce things that are often intangible (ideas, decisions, problem-solving) but whose value is neither a function of quantity produced nor of time spent.
And this is true whether the person is in the office or working remotely!
Knowledge worker productivity: everyone talks about it, but nobody measures it
You can make a ton of decisions in a row with minimal impact, and then mull over one for days on end with major impact.
Asking a knowledge worker to increase his productivity can even be counterproductive: he’ll be doing lots of visible things of no value, churning out air, to the detriment of higher-impact things that take longer.
In short, when we talk about the productivity of the knowledge worker, i.e. the remote worker, we’re talking about imperfect, sometimes inadequate measures, and we should be talking more about quality than quantity (Let’s talk about quality of work).
That’s the paradox of the concept: everyone talks about it, evokes it to justify this or that measure, but nobody measures it.
Speaking of remote work, I challenge anyone who uses the productivity argument to give me any figures (and not just impressions) to prove that it has gone down when working remotely and gone up when returning to the office. Or the other way round.
Are we therefore doomed to remain locked in a never-ending debate because there are no answers? No, because if we can’t measure the productivity of the knowledge worker, we know what conditions it. All we need to do is switch from the field of productivity to that of operational excellence, and from that of measurement to that of organization and management.
Operational excellence for knowledge workers
We don’t hear much about operational excellence when we talk about knowledge workers (Knowledge workers, the excluded from operational excellence?) but that’s not because they don’t apply it, it’s simply because they refuse to do so, or even because to do so would entail an unbearable paradigm shift for many managers.
And when we talk about knowledge work, we can only invoke Peter Drucker, quoted by the Newyorker:
“Peter Drucker noted that during the twentieth century, the productivity of manual workers in the manufacturing sector increased by a factor of fifty as we got smarter about the best way to build products. He argued that the knowledge sector, by contrast, had hardly begun a similar process of self-examination and improvement, existing at the end of the twentieth century where manufacturing had been a hundred years earlier. ”
The Newyorker – Slack Is the Right Tool for the Wrong Way to Work
What we do know is that, unlike repetitive tasks, the work of knowledge workers is based on intellectual, creative and analytical processes, requiring effective management of information, time and resources to achieve sustainable productivity.
This suggests a number of areas for improvement.
Optimization of work processes
Knowledge workers must benefit from flexible processes that foster agility and creativity (Employees must follow the processes. Are you sure?).
As I said in an article mentioned above “Unlike manual workers, who follow repetitive processes, knowledge workers have to solve complex problems, often creatively. To improve their productivity, [Peter Drucker]suggests giving them the freedom to structure their work and encouraging a results-oriented rather than hours-oriented approach.”
Conversely, excessive bureaucracy and organizational cumbersomeness is a major obstacle to their productivity (The organizational complication: the #1 irritant of the employee experience and The real barrier to innovation and internal communication? Certainly not remote work!)
Before anything else, the first area for improvement is to deal with the business’s organizational debt(How to Tackle the Biggest Threat to Your Team’s Growth):
“Org debt exists whenever you find yourself spending more time navigating a process or set of rules than engaged with the issue itself. ”
Reducing repetitive tasks through automation and digitization also frees up time for higher value-added tasks. For example, automating reports or centralizing documentation reduces administrative overload, but this doesn’t dispense with work on organizational debt (AI Reasoning Is Cool, But First How Can We Tackle Organisational Debt?).
Managing information overload
Knowledge workers are faced with information overload, or infobesity, which has a major impact on their productivity (Digital Infobesity: When Collaboration Tools Degrade Productivity, QWL and Amplify Mental Workload and In the future of work the mental load is the new workload).
It is urgent to combat this overload by filtering relevant information, prioritizing critical tasks and making better use of meetings. Of course, technology can play its part, provided it is put to good use, which is anything but the case today (Collaborative tools in the workplace: a real waste?), and generally speaking, it is above all in terms of skills linked to information processing and behaviors that this will come down to.
Improving collaboration and communication :
For operational excellence to be achieved, it is essential to establish effective collaboration methods and adapted communication tools.
This wasn’t the case before the widespread use of remote work during COVID, and it still isn’t today (Are you really ready for all cases of remote working ?).
But once again, it’s a question of behavior and usage, before being a question of tools which, when misused, become non-productivity factors (Why your Digital Workplace is hurting your organization’s performance).
On the other hand, collaboration and knowledge management via information-sharing platforms, project management software and, in general, collaborative business tools make information more transparent and accessible, reducing silos, provided you get it right.
Skills development and continuous learning
In a context where technologies and knowledge are constantly evolving, knowledge workers need to be able to learn continuously and develop multi-disciplinary skills.
This can be achieved through tools, but above all through dedicated time and an organizational and managerial context conducive to exchanging, sharing and acquiring knowledge.
Improved decision-making
Knowledge workers are faced with complex decisions requiring in-depth analysis.
In innovative ways, lean management processes applied to knowledge work aim to eliminate superfluous steps and simplify decision-making. This can include agile methodologies and progressive validation processes that reduce uncertainty while enabling fast adjustments (Lean Principles for Knowledge Workers and A Structured Approach to Lean Knowledge Work).
Finally, The open space is not a factory but sometimes you should look at it that way.
Bottom line
If we can only imperfectly measure the productivity of knowledge workers in the strict sense of the term, it is easily possible to identify the axes of an operational excellence approach that will improve not their productivity (the term seems inappropriate here) but their efficiency.
Strangely enough, whether they work face-to-face or remotely doesn’t seem to have any impact here.
Photo : Knowledge worker productivité de PeopleImages.com – Yuri A via Shutterstock.
