Part 2:
I ended part 1 of the myth of the perfect productivity system by highlighting research that concluded that collaboration drives performance and that the key to productive collaboration was purpose. So, in part 2, I thought I would look at what else has an impact on employee performance and consider potential strategies for measuring the performance of our modern-day workers.
An interesting article by AWA, “The six factors of knowledge workers productivity” highlights social cohesion, perceived supervisory support, information sharing, vision and goal clarity, external communication and trust as key factors that impact knowledge workers performance.
An article by Robertson Cooper entitled “A guide to creating good days at work” answers the question “what makes a good day at work” by listing the following:
- Experiencing positive emotions
- Feeling connected
- Achieving tasks
- Performing meaningful work
The UK anatomy of work index 2021 states that “With work about work consuming 61% of our day, just above the global average of 60%, meaningful work sits on the side-lines. As a result, just 27% of time is spent on the skilled job employees were hired to do and 12% on forward-looking strategy”. It follows that reducing work about work and streamlining workflows should have a positive impact on performance.
“Meanwhile, with time in unnecessary meetings on the rise, people are finding they have to work much longer hours, for some over 200 more hours a year more than they did in 2019”.
Alongside the impacts highlighted above, other well documented impacts include:
- Clear and open internal communication.
- A clear meeting culture including a move towards more asynchronous collaboration.
- Autonomy and self-discipline.
- Access to the right tools.
- Quick access to information. It’s estimated that 2.5 hours a week per person are lost due to people having to search for the information they need.
- Psychological safety and trust
- Redesigned and simplified workflows.
The list is not exhaustive by any means, but it highlights the fact that there are a whole range of diverse factors that impact on performance and each will need to be considered when developing a measurement strategy.
There are of course several existing strategies being used to measure some of the factors listed above. They tend to fall into 2 management styles. The first style is to control and track employees using a number of different tools. The use of time tracking software like Workflow Max and Rescue time is on the increase. Since the pandemic made the majority of us work from home, the use of inactivity tracking and poor usage monitoring have skyrocketed, as has social media monitoring.
I feel that the use of these types of tools will only lead to a further dip in motivation and increased acrimony towards management. With resignations on the increase as people look for more purpose in their lives, the use of spyware will only exasperate the situation.
A better, less obtrusive option is to use project management software products like Asana and Monday to name just two; they offer clarity and openness while still measuring adherence to timescales and outcomes without the big brother approach.
Some organisations have changed their review procedures from the traditional 6-month lookback at what has happened in the past, to a short sharp weekly review and goalsetting process allowing much closer understanding of what employees are doing and how well they are performing. Software products like 15Five can help with this results-based process. Co-worker and customer feedback systems can also be used to monitor perceived individual and team performance.
So, are we any closer to finding the perfect system?
When looking at issues like this, I often use “competing values framework”, a framework developed by Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, in their book “Diagnosing and changing organizational culture” as a way of visualising opposing values.
Using the framework allows us to juxtapose routine, transactional work with complex, proactive work and individual work with interactive work, offering 4 work styles each with different work-types and carrying out different activities. Each work-style will require different measures.
Using the 4 workstyles process, we can start to develop measures that will suit each workstyle. These of course will have to be bespoke to the individual business and the specific tasks carried out.
To start to map an organisation’s employee workstyles we would firstly gain knowledge about each employee’s work-type and activities using a simple online survey. Results will then be filtered and each employee will be given a work-style that corresponds to the tasks and activities they carry out most. At this point a discussion can be had with the employee to ascertain what measures could be used.
I do feel however that as with any process that compartmentalises people, we are human and all different and maybe the best way to ensure that you are getting the best performance out of your people is to build a culture and environment, where people feel trusted, motivated and inspired to do their best work.