Do remote employees actually work longer hours? Does that equate to higher productivity?
A lot of them said that they were working at least 2-3 hours more per day just because of meeting overload and all the other things that are happening. They’d have to go back and do their actual day’s work and to meet their objective and key results and all their MBOs. They said their performance was being measured just to prove their productivity and that was extremely taxing.
On one side you hear that they want flexibility and to work from home. On the flip side, there's an argument that people have been overworked, they're exhausted and they need a change because it’s not sustainable. I find this argument very circular in nature and I think it's a different scenario that we're dealing with now.
I've worked in other situations, including my current one, where nobody cares what hours you work. We're global and most of my staff is on the east coast. The expectation is just to get the projects done. And it's also a culture where people shut off their notifications when they're done. So, I've yet to hear a single complaint like, “Since I've been remote, I feel like I have to work longer to justify that.” I heard that early on in the pandemic. I think that people generally felt that. But I would wonder what people would say today if they worked in an organization where the right expectations were set and it was clear from the top down that this is normal and these are the hours.
We went back and dug into the data to understand where this was coming from. One of my hypotheses that was validated by the data was that the respondents who said they were working more just to feel productive were from the companies that used the scientific management style or the Taylorist approach that is pathological or bureaucratic organizations. They said they were constantly on either calls, messenger or email.
There was a funny story that someone shared in a follow up interview: They had written an application that would randomly send emails at night, just so that their boss would see them and think they were working crazy hours. It’s a super talented and creative response, but it saddens me to think that there are still organizations to this day that are looking at the number of hours people work.
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Mine is an in-office culture by definition. IT was one of the only places that had anybody working remotely prior to the pandemic. I had one area dean say, “I'm going to drive a print out to somebody's house during the pandemic.” I said, “No, don't do that. You can't do that to me, that doesn't work.” At the end of the day, are we measuring people by whether they’re in their seat or are we ultimately measuring people according to the job they have to do?
That's what I call the factory contact center culture: you have to be in your seat between specific hours and you always have a supervisor breathing down your neck. Those are the kinds of organizations that need to evolve away from a Taylorist outlook. It's nice to see some of them actually moving more towards deliverables and business outcomes, rather than how many hours you clocked.