Productivity paranoia, the phenomenon that overwhelms both bosses and employees

There is a disconnect between the perception of employees and bosses about performance in remote work. While 87% of employees state that they are productive in telecommuting, only 12% of leaders are confident that the performance of their teams is good in this scheme. Microsoft has described this phenomenon as “productivity paranoia”.

However, the hybrid scheme has done little to combat the mistrust that bosses have about the productivity of their teams. According to Labor Trends Index From Microsoft WorkLab, 85% of leaders say that the mix between face-to-face and remote work has made it difficult to trust that employees are productive.

The productivity paranoia it is the result of this mistrust of leaders about the performance that people can have in remote work, even if they are in a hybrid model. This phenomenon has been named as such because bosses fear that job flexibility will cause people not to work, even though there are many indicators showing that employee performance has been maintained or even increased.

“Many leaders and managers lack the old visual cues of what it means to be productive because they can’t see who’s working hard as they walk down the hall or walk through the conference room,” the report says.

Through its report, the technology giant warns that productivity paranoia is one of the main risks for hybrid work to be sustainable. “Leaders must move from worrying about whether their people are working hard enough to helping them focus on the work that matters most,” the report says.

For Natalia Jiménez, regional leader of Deel Expansion, part of this phenomenon responds to the deep roots of the face-to-face work routineslike seeing people doing things to convince themselves that they are really focused on their activities.

“I think there is a fear of productivity, but it seems more like a facade to the fear of losing control, because there are statistics and numbers on the growth that companies had in the pandemic and the increase in productivity. However, the managers are scared, but the reality may be more linked to a loss of control, not knowing where people are”, explains the specialist.

Estrella Vázquez has a similar perception. The general director of the Factor RH consultancy assures that an important conclusion in all this is that the leadership style has to be modified.

“You have to manage by objectives, it is not something that has to do with perception. If the person is hired to fulfill a certain number of tasks, it does not matter if he does it inside or outside the office. By knowing how many are the deliverables, then we can have the same productivity metric”, says the specialist.

High productivity or overwork?

According to Microsoft WorkLab, virtual meetings They have had a growth of 153% globally in the more than 30 months of the pandemic. “The tension is clear: In an average week, 42% of participants multitask during meetings by actively sending an email or message, and that doesn’t include practices like reading incoming emails and messages or working on files. that are not from those meetings, ”says the report.

In this sense, 43% of employees say that they already feel exhausted at work. To a large extent, this is the result of a lack of clarity and purpose in each person’s objectives.

“Defining what task is not relevant is just as important as defining what does matter; In a world where everything is important, nothing is. We have reached a point of diminishing returns due to overwork and overload: if leaders do not intervene, they jeopardize productivity, ”says the report.

From the perspective of Estrella Vázquez, the achievement orientation it must be in both senses, as much by the leaders as by the collaborators. “There are people who come to the office to brag that they fell asleep at 3 in the morning, the question is what did you achieve in those hours. The reality is that working long hours and doing a lot of things doesn’t make you more productive.”

In this way, productivity paranoia is also installed in the minds of some employees. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), remote work schemes have led people to have to invest more hours in the performance of their tasks. at least the 27% of employees who participates in some flexible scheme expresses that he works in his spare time to satisfy the demands of the job.

“Research on telecommuting has repeatedly shown that employees who work from home tend to work longer hours than when they are working at the employer’s premises, in part because commuting time is substituted for work activities and also due to changes in work routines and the blurring of boundaries between paid work and personal life. Teleworking, in general, can give rise to a longer work hours and to an increase in the workload during the nights and on weekends, ”says the agency in the document Telecommuting during the Covid-19 pandemic and after it.

Paranoia and equality between collaborators

“Definitely the criterion of a good worker changes. Before, the commitment was to arrive early at the office and be responsible, but now in my work team there may be people who work with a difference of two hours or a boss who does not connect on Fridays. For this reason, commitment must now be measured by other criteria; that’s why the measurement by objectives it is so important”, emphasizes Natalia Jiménez.

The productivity paranoia that companies currently face could not only put hybrid work itself at risk, but also generate an inequality between remote and face-to-face workers. According to Mercer’s study on Global Talent Trends64% of HR executives in Mexico are concerned about promotion opportunities for remote workers.

“The proximity bias is natural, I empathize or not with the people I am close to and different conversations are generated in person than those of a one-hour virtual meeting, that is why we have to start working on changing the leadership style, but also in the change of job dynamics and designs”, points out Estrella Vázquez.

Specialists agree that the focus on results It will be key both to avoid productivity paranoia and to have equal growth opportunities between remote and face-to-face collaborators.