The Productivity Divide

I have written a number of blog posts relating to working from home including ones that describe the  difference in view of effectiveness of WFH as perceived by employees and their managers.

Managers who think staff working from home are not always productive sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to monitor what they think is productivity.

They may monitor websites and apps visited by employees during work hours; they may monitor keystrokes; they may block certain sites; they may capture random screenshots.

Of course, if employees know such surveillance is going on, they will find ways of working around it, and we have a form of ‘arms race’ as each outdoes the other. 

None of it, of course, is productive.

All this goes away if the managers start to concentrate on outputs, and outcomes, instead of inputs.

Ask not, “What do we want our employees to do?” but “What do we want our employees to achieve?”