“It’s unproductive to talk about productivity”

Musings from our latest Fluxx Exchange

Some offices are re-opening, others are shut until next year at the earliest most are stuck somewhere in-between. Some people never stopped going to work. Some will never go back. How do you manage a hybrid workforce? We looked at how the structures of teams are being permanently changed by the pandemic in our monthly Fluxx Exchange.

1. The democratisation of communication. We’ve spoken about the shift to a new era of leadership. It takes transparent and honest communication to build trust across an organisation remotely. Managers can’t keep a close eye on employees anymore. There’s ambiguity around their team’s schedules — but, informal conversations sparked by a peak into someone’s home through the familiar Zoom rectangle can often be far more informative than a peering over someone’s shoulder.
2. Command and control is over. The scope of responsibility for those at the top of the business has evolved and expanded. On the one hand responsibility just can’t end at the office door anymore. Managers that prioritise employee wellbeing, actively engage in conversations about home life, are seeing rewards. Engaged employees can be trusted to make the right decisions remotely. On the other hand a lack of oversight means managers have to give their teams more freedom to act, acting as a sounding board at key decision points. Perhaps micromanagement can be permanently cut out by Covid.
3. Be deliberate and purposeful about where work happens. We tie routine and mindsets to place. We’ll need to be mindful of the spaces we make, whether at home or in an office, to serve the kind of thinking or ways of working we wish to promote. Working from home solo might work for some things, but sometimes you need to promote reflective thinking, the kind that is prompted through moving through space or being stimulated by other people.
4. Be mindful who’s missing out. People who’ve found remote working suits them tend to be financially stable and can afford the space for a comfortable set up. They are typically established in their career and already granted a level of flexibility and trust from their colleagues or bosses pre-lockdown. Younger employees are more likely to share living spaces with friends or family members. Work probably provides an element of their social lives too, and with the uncertainty of furlough or redundancy, remote working doesn’t necessarily offer freedom. Not only that, those further down organisations are more likely to end up with tasks to grind out, missing out on the more interesting conversations and decisions that happen as part of office life.
5. Development is stalling for those that need it. Working remotely suits people whose careers’ and learning have already plateaued. Learning is done through osmosis; observing those more experienced than us. Less experienced people are missing out on some of the most vital learning of their working lives. That’s not only stalling their development but storing up problems for the future. The leaders that will need to step up in the coming years are seeing their education and development stunted.
6. The term ‘productivity’ isn’t useful. Some studies suggest remote working has led to higher productivity whilst others say the opposite, most agree we’re working more hours. Either way, the value of measuring productivity was questioned. Shouldn’t productivity be outcome-focused? Or, importantly, how do we create space for productive thinking, when productivity as a concept is so fluid and evaluated differently in different organisations?

We believe organisations will have to reimagine the operating model to enable effective working in a hybrid fashion. It won’t be as simple as simply moving offline to online and vice versa. The challenge will be to balance the needs of the business, with individual employee needs, and the considerations are huge.

In our conversation we touched on security, governance, wellbeing, knowledge sharing and so much more; all of these are part of a complex web of considerations that come together to create an effective operating model. If you want to know more about the work we’re doing helping our clients prepare for a hybrid future, get in touch now jassi@fluxx.uk.com.

Jassi Porteous is a consultant at Fluxx, the UK’s leading independent Innovation Company. For the last 9 years, we’ve been supporting clients to accelerate growth and sustain change; helping big companies be purposeful, build internal innovation capability and develop new products and services at pace.

Got an idea you want to get off the ground? Get in touch Jassi@Fluxx.uk.com. For more thoughts worth sharing, sign up to What the Fluxx or follow us on LinkedIn.