To boost productivity, companies need to reduce distractions and allow staff the time to focus on their most essential work.Getty Images
Lisa Belanger, founder of ConsciousWorks, a Canmore, Alta. company that offers consulting and training to workplaces around mental health and productivity, once had a senior company leader extoll to her about the output of his team at a large, results-focused workplace.
“The culture we’ve created here is amazing,” a senior manager enthused, explaining to Ms. Belanger that staff were meeting targets and also seeing to their personal obligations.
Then she talked to someone on his team. “When we got on the call, I could see this guy was beyond exhausted,” she recalls. He reported putting in long days because of deadlines and colleagues being in different time zones and had not seen his toddler for two weeks.
“I shared this information, with his consent, and his boss was blown away, and felt horrible.”
Just because employees get their work done doesn’t mean they and their companies are efficient and the workload is sustainable.
True productivity sees people achieving workplace goals because of good time usage, says Mark Ellwood of Pace Productivity in Toronto, which helps companies improve performance. “Some say we shouldn’t care about how much time people spend doing things if they get results. But I say if they’re being burdened by administrative tasks or interruptions or whatever, wouldn’t it be worth understanding that and measuring that so that we can remove those burdens?”
Finding that sweet spot between the big and small picture, and making sure employees feel supported in having productive work and home lives – that’s the challenge.
Productivity matters
Most companies care about efficiency, because it affects profitability. A 2023 report by McKinsey & Co. found that more than half of employees say they’re not productive at work. It shows employee disengagement and attrition can cost a medium-size company between US$228-million and US$355-million a year in lost productivity.
But forcing employees to stay on task won’t help. In 2020, many companies ramped up their surveillance. One report out of Toronto Metropolitan University found 70 per cent of employees surveyed said they were being electronically monitored. Those who had no information about the nature of the monitoring had much lower rates of trust in their employer.
Ironically, a 2023 survey by International Workplace Group found 79 per cent of employees consider themselves more productive in a hybrid workplace.
Looking at metrics
John Trougakos, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto who looks at time usage and how to achieve a four-day workweek, recommends companies look to a range of metrics to measure productivity, but always with specific goals in mind.
“How does it all translate back to organizational strategy?” he asks. Benchmarks set out at the company, team and individual level should inform those metrics.
Ms. Belanger likes objectives being written right into job descriptions. “Once a person is hired, they should have a clear idea of what their job is, when they’re done for the day or the week, however you want to measure it.”
Objective measurements can include sales quotas, new leads generated, number of reports, billable hours and the like.
Mr. Ellwood thinks it’s strategic to support staff to spend time on their most essential tasks. “I always ask people, ‘What are the most important things you need to do in your job?’” he says. He researches time use and says the average time spent on such priority tasks is 20 per cent, going up to 33 per cent for the super productive.
Subjective measurements matter too, says Mr. Trougakos. Quality, creativity, networking and team building are significant, but to measure these accomplishments, colleagues have to weigh in. “We have to have empowerment and trust in our employees and create a psychologically safe environment where they can do these things without fear of some kind of repercussion.”
Ms. Belanger thinks companies should highly value efforts to improve workplace culture. “I like the idea of looking at those unmeasurables at work. Like the person who just makes you feel amazing. And not to be stereotypical, but the office mom, she should get points for what she does.”
An app for that
For hour-by-hour information on how employees use their time, technology can help. Mr. Trougakos is interested in the new generation of time-tracking apps. “At a basic level, they look at things like how people are using their days and how effective they are. Are they spending too much time in inefficient meetings? Are they experiencing a lot of interruptions?”
Mr. Ellwood has clients use a device called a TimeCorder that allows them to track their tasks throughout the day. He focuses on using it as a fun game that doesn’t rout out time wasting but shows how unnecessary e-mails and meetings can drain time.
Indeed, one Microsoft survey from 2023 ranked inefficient meetings as the top productivity disrupter, along with having too many meetings. The study found employees were in three times more meetings than they were three years before.
Ms. Belanger wants to know what people don’t accomplish because they are stuck in meetings. “We see from the most successful companies, such as Amazon and Google, their shift in focus in productivity is about freeing up time so people can do their work.”
What can’t you track
Ms. Belanger says productivity metrics often miss what’s important in knowledge economy jobs, such as activities that keep people well or offer them time to think creatively. That’s why she puts her daytime yoga classes right in her schedule, as she sees them as pivotal to her productivity.
Mr. Trougakos, meanwhile, studies recovery time, and shows that what people do the previous night affects their workplace performance.
Encouraging good days
Mr. Trougakos says time use data can help companies dispense of waste plus allow individuals to understand the rhythms of their day, and schedule tasks accordingly. It’ll be different for night owls, but “75 per cent of the population have their mental peak some time in the mid-morning, so that’s when they should be doing their most critical tasks.”
Motivation might be the key to productivity, and that relates to the work itself and how companies are managed. “At one point, we thought culture was about having free food and ping pong tables. The biggest motivating factor for employees is doing work that is of value,” says Mr. Ellwood.
Supporting people to be healthy and happy at work and at home is, for Ms. Belanger, the only real way to boost productivity, keep good employees, and stay profitable.
“Everybody wants to be productive,” she says. “So it’s a matter of designing a social and physical environment and team environment that really facilitates that.”