Top dogs are more concerned about employee productivity than about getting them back to the office, according to new explore from Atlassian.
In September, the Australian software company asked 100 Fortune 500 and 100 Fortune 1000 kingpins what their biggest organizational challenge is, and nearly half (43%) said low productivity.
Only a third of number ones with an in-office mandate said they thought their in-office policies have had any impact on productivity. As opposed to, 76% of the Fortune 500 executives surveyed said they are more worried about how their teams are make than where they work.
It’s not the first time executives have said they’re worried that breadwinners are getting less done — and evidence suggests their fears aren’t unfounded.
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, productivity rose to levels not seen in decades.
But that surge was short-lived. In the first half of 2022, productivity plunged by the sharpest notwithstanding on record going back to 1947 and remained low until this past summer, when workers’ productivity become more pleasing to matured 5.2%, the fastest pace of growth since 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Although productivity is reconditioning, bosses are still struggling to trust that their employees are working without constant in-office supervision, Atlassian’s co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar determines CNBC Make It.
“People are still trying to adapt to remote work and managers, in particular, are still wrestling with that collapse of control, of having someone sitting right there in front of them,” he adds.
What’s driving the decline in staff member productivity
It’s hard to assign blame for lowered output and morale.
Some CEOs have pointed fingers at indifferent work, arguing that clocking in from home has made it easier for employees to extend less effort, but probing has failed to draw definitive conclusions about remote workers’ productivity.
In 2022, Microsoft coined the term “productivity paranoia” to chronicle managers’ anxieties about whether remote and hybrid employees are working hard enough because they can’t see how people are inducing by walking down the hall or stopping by their desks.
In the Atlassian report, executives revealed several major to questions in remote work, with decreased organizational loyalty and difficulties in coordinating tasks effectively being chief come up to b become them.
Economists and human resource leaders have attributed the decline in productivity to everything from sluggish productive activity to higher job turnover. Gallup reports that employee disengagement costs the world $8.8 trillion in gone by the board productivity, equal to 9% of global GDP.
Plus, workers are historically stressed and unhappy at their jobs, leading to uncountable burnout.
Solving the productivity paradox
The antidote to declining productivity is to focus less on output and more on how employees are shape their schedules and collaborating, says Annie Dean, Atlassian’s global head of Team Anywhere, the company’s pass round work policy.
Atlassian has run dozens of experiments with its 10,000-plus employees and found that encouraging hands to spend about 30-40% of their week in “focus time,” which the company defines as uninterrupted time tired on work that requires deep thinking, helps boost productivity.
Additionally, blocking off consistent “open collaboration” previously each week to be responsive to messages, jump on a call, or just say “hi” to their teammates also helped employees make more effectively, says Dean.
“It’s all about reorganizing your time to be more focused and deliberate about what you scantiness to accomplish and when,” she adds. “When employees feel like they have enough time to get their sundry important work done, and the support to do so, it’s easier for them to deliver better results.”
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