Using technology to combat productivity paranoia

Kay Oldham Date published: Apr 12, 23

The last few years have seen people working from home or remotely in record numbers, initially enforced but also increasingly through choice. However, while there can be clear benefits to giving employees the freedom to work where they want, it’s becoming clear that many leaders don’t have complete trust in their ability to deliver.

For example, in September 2022, a global Microsoft survey of 22,000 workers found that 85% of leaders believe hybrid work has made it difficult to have total confidence in their employees’ productivity. Furthermore, the survey also found that while 87% of employees believe they are being productive, only 12% of their employers were fully confident that was the case.

Assessing its own study, Microsoft claimed the shift towards hybrid working had caused this difference in opinion. Leaders no longer have a clear view of what’s happening in their teams, can’t see who’s working when, and have less direct insight into what employees are producing.

The disconnect between employees and their leaders has been dubbed ‘productivity paranoia’. This describes employers’ fear that, even if people are completing their allocated hours, they won’t put in the hard yards if they’re out of sight and not in the office.

Are employees actually less productive?

For the most part, productivity paranoia appears to be precisely that; unwarranted paranoia. For example, Microsoft’s research finds that the average Microsoft Teams user has seen a 153% increase in the number of meetings they attended every week since the start of the pandemic.

People are not only having their calendars blocked out but also increasingly being double-booked. Microsoft’s study found that employees’ overlapping meetings had increased by 46% over the previous 12 months. And the surge in meeting requests had seen declines and tentative RSVPs increase by 84% and 216%, respectively. As a result, over two in five employees (42%) are being forced to multitask throughout meetings, with tasks like sending emails on top of reading new emails and carrying out web research.

Understanding productivity paranoia causes

Managers’ productivity paranoia is often caused by their failure to clearly articulate what they expect from staff, including unclear guidance on deliverables and timelines or setting unrealistic expectations. This is more likely to create a perceived lack of productivity as employees increasingly don’t have enough time or resources to meet their demands.

So any leaders struggling with productivity levels should first assess whether they are setting the bar too high. They should also consider whether their deliverables are clearly and consistently articulated and reasonable for employees to meet.

How to address productivity paranoia

The gulf between how leaders and their employees perceive remote productivity levels means there’s a risk it could diminish hybrid working opportunities completely at some companies. So, managers that demand staff return to the office could be perceived as untrusting and undermining, which could end up pushing their employees away.

To avoid this, many managers are turning to digital tools to help them measure employees’ activity and productivity levels and monitor the work that users are completing.

But to truly address productivity paranoia, managers need to redefine their working methods. For example, leaders can shift from monitoring employees’ input and work levels to more outcome-based approaches. Doing so moves them away from micromanaging people to enabling conversations between remote colleagues and providing clarity on organisational goals.

However, rethinking the approach to management will differ across businesses and sectors. For example, employers in more forward-thinking organisations, that aren’t held back by legacy approaches, will be better equipped to quickly switch to an outcome-based system. While smaller businesses with more loosely defined processes can pivot to new leadership styles that better support hybrid working.

Combat productivity paranoia with Ideagen Huddle

Ideagen Huddle helps businesses combat the risk of productivity paranoia by:

• Simplifying the process of meeting project goals on time and on budget
• Providing full visibility to create accountability and peace of mind
• Using secure online workspaces so teams can connect quickly and easily with internal teams and external parties
• Sharing updates and tracking task activities – guaranteeing engagements remain to schedule

Huddle includes automatic activity tracking, which enables businesses to see who’s accessing, downloading, or editing content and see what they’re doing with it in real time. As a result, Huddle ensures that managers have the full transparency they are looking for when it comes to employee activity. It also means leaders no longer waste time and energy checking in on their team and worrying about whether people are being productive when working remotely.

Every document in Huddle has its own comment stream, enabling leaders to track and engage with their teams' conversations. Huddle also provides an action centre, which summarises all tasks assigned to workspace members, where managers can filter the status of activities assigned to employees, spotting missed deadlines or potential bottlenecks in their processes.

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