The Productivity Roller Coaster

We seem to be on a great productivity roller coaster these days, if you listen to the headlines.

During COVID-19 shutdowns, the sudden switch to remote work had a silver lining: a heck of a lot of people reported feeling way more productive when working from home.

But now, headlines like this late October one in the Washington Post refute that claim: “U.S. workers have gotten way less productive. No one is sure why.”

According to WaPo, worker “output” hasn’t been this bad since 1947.

As a recruiter, I take this kind of news with a grain of salt. Measurements are inherently flawed because they usually involve a small subset of the entire working population or only a certain sector or industry.

WaPo reports that productivity is technically “the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour,” but that metric only applies in certain settings.

From the other side of the desk – the WHY side – mentions of burnout are up 42 percent in employee reviews on career site Glassdoor compared with 2019 data.

Maybe both metrics are cherry picked or observational. Hard to say.

Personally, I think there are more important metrics to pay attention to. Focusing on leadership, culture and employee engagement will allow companies to lead from the front.

#productivity

#HRmetrics

#corporateculture