As we’re coming to the end of September, the heralded “return to work” from Labor Day is being reexamined….
New data from Kastle Systems on office occupancy now, up 4 percent from the week before Labor Day, with 10 of the country’s top metropolitan areas seeing an average of 47.5 percent of workers swiping into offices compared with pre-pandemic levels.
- 87% of surveyed workers say they are productive at work.
- 12% of leaders say they’re fully confident their employees are productive.
The company is calling the gap “productivity paranoia.” The surveys found that a lack of trust in employee productivity is more common among managers whose teams continue to work away from the traditional office at least part of the time.
Data gleaned from the usage of Microsoft software and online services indicate a sustained increase in overall activity by workers.
- The company said that the number of weekly meetings was up 153% vs. the start of the pandemic for the average Microsoft Teams user as of this spring, and the trend shows no sign of abating.
- About 42% of meeting attendees are multitasking by sending email and other messages. That doesn’t include other forms of multitasking, such as reading email or browsing the web.
That’s the “productivity theater” portion of the report. In addition to their regular working hours, office workers said they spend an average of 67 extra minutes online each day (5.5 hours a week) simply making sure they’re visibly working online, according to a recent survey from software companies Qatalog and GitLab.
And some of that is leading to paranoia. Over in the Wall Street Journal, a Gartner VP details how The number of employers who use some kind of worker surveillance doubled since the pandemic. He says that two-thirds of medium-to-large companies now do this, up from one-third.
Time is being proven to be disconnected from productivity – we have updates to that UK experiment in 4-day work weeks. Among 41 companies participating in the trial, which began about three months ago, 35 said they would probably keep the new schedule even after the experiment officially ends in November.
Only two said productivity had dropped, while six said it had actually improved — maybe because of heightened employee morale.
Why do we care?
Headlines were saying that “the return to work is working.” Is it? When less than half of the workers are coming in… that doesn’t seem like it’s working to me.
If you think I’m covering this a lot… you’re right. This is one of the dominant trends in “work,” and its entire technology enabled. A reminder – a backlash against the tech can sweep up the provider who provides it. Ultimately, an IT services firm wants its customers to be successful with the technology. That’s why we care so very much about this.
Because beyond that, there’s this entire wild west of consulting and advising in a highly complex world. There’s no single answer here, which is excellent news for those who like to sell complex services.
The critical insight continues to be “train better managers who know how to handle remotely.”