Companies are looking at the value proposition of productivity, with the need to minimize burnout

Human Impact of Business Transformation
Insider

The pandemic has changed how we work, not just where we work.
Productivity has increased, but so have stress levels for teams. Companies are looking for a more balanced approach.
Leaders from McKinsey & Company, Tradeshift, and ghSMART share their views on how their organizations are managing this shift.
This article is part of a series on Insider's research on The Human Impact of Business Transformation.

The pandemic has changed more than where we work; it's also required us to reassess how we work. In the early months, many companies saw an explosion of productivity from leaders and their teams. Time saved by no longer having to commute to work was redistributed to meetings and ongoing projects. Employees capitalized on existing technology, supplementing that with new tools that enabled them to stay on task while at home.

But all of this had a side effect: suddenly, employees found themselves working far too much. The videoconferencing they came to rely on led to longer work days, and coupled with the lack of distinction between home and work, that resulted in burnout. Not only was the new normal unsustainable; it was unhealthy, too.

Now, many companies are working to achieve "balanced" productivity growth -- and they're also reevaluating productivity as a measure of success. Our deep dive into the Human Impact of Business Transformation continues with a look at productivity, performance, and their place in the knowledge economy.

Following, executives from McKinsey & Co, Tradeshift, and ghSMART share their stories of navigating these challenges.

Elena Botelho, coauthor of New York Times bestseller "The CEO Next Door" and partner at leadership advisory firm, ghSMART

"It's a different time, a different team, and you really need to think about how you will move forward in the next context rather than come back to how it used to be."

If you were to look at the pandemic as a whole, our team's productivity has absolutely gone up.we know we can all load ourselves up with Zoom meetings, whereas before I would've spent a day traveling for a one hour meeting. But the question is, what's the right balance for the future?

Burnout is a felt experience...and the experience is driven by a lot of factors other than just the objective reality of hours of work. How connected and supported do you feel by your colleagues and your boss, regardless of whether it happens remotely or in person? What's your sense of purpose behind the work?

There's also a lot of conversation about the return to the office. Surprisingly, even the most accomplished CEOs, CHROs, and leaders we work with focus almost entirely around the operational and logistical factors of return to office. Things like, "Do we allow hybrid working? What does that look like? Do we require vaccination? What about the lunchroom capacity?" et cetera. Operational pieces can be complex, but are still well within the comfort zone for many leaders — things you can tangibly assess and get your arms around. On the other hand, the emotional aspects of return to office aren't getting as much attention You really need to think about returning to office as a relaunch of your team. People had vastly different experiences through the pandemic…and have a wide range of very strong feelings about coming back to the office and the support they need to operate in the "new world".

Rik Kirkland, senior advisor, McKinsey & Company

"Productivity is hard to measure. We knew this going in. But it's only getting harder, because more and more of the economy is shifting into that squishy, soft, intangible knowledge-based world."

We had a productivity measurement problem even before the pandemic. Classically-defined productivity is measured in the ways we always do it...basically, it's an output/input thing, and there's some measure of wealth. We have these debates about how you measure services, creative work, knowledge work, because the metrics are a lot squishier.

I think one of the big problems is applying old "Taylorite" measures by default to knowledge work and creative work. We've learned we can do remarkable things without having to be in the office measuring you by how many hours you put in. And yet, a lot of leaders still default to, "Who's here late? Who got in early? Whose key card shows what they did?"

One of the lessons we've learned from the pandemic is if we were moving toward flexibility before, human-centered productivity has to allow for massively more flexibility than the old model. If (employees) aren't able to flex to deal with what they need to, then your productivity is being mismeasured.

Mikkel Hippe Brun, senior vice president, APAC, Tradeshift

"Productivity's about getting things done. Being effective is about getting the right things done."

Is (productivity) outdated as a measure? In a sense I think it is...is it productive to be attending ten Zoom meetings in a day and not actually getting any real work done? When do you write that brief? When do you have time for yourself to think and develop your business? We have to think about what is effective work, and be mindful that during a workday effective work and productivity happens in bursts.

Myself, I'm highly productive in the morning. You'll get less and less value out of my work as the day passes, and then into the night I'll start getting a new kick of adrenaline again, and I'll be productive because I don't have all the interruptions. We all have our own rhythm. So I think it's about optimizing for those bursts of productivity. We have to be so structured about how we organize our days and how we set expectations in the company as managers.

Productivity is about more than output, particularly in a knowledge economy. Building and maintaining an effective workforce requires that you enable your employees to strike a sustainable balance between work and life. The payoff? Your team is free to tap into their creativity and efficiency on their own terms.

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