Presence Over Performance At Work

The Working Week

Are you in a job where you have to be there in person everyday? Some people work shift, weekends and bank holidays, but typically Monday to Friday is the average work week and the main focus of a working timetable for a lot of people. The week typically starts with a commute for most people, this can involve public transport a city bicycle scheme, a walk to the office or in a lot of cases a drive to work stuck in traffic that seems to always be a little worse when your running a little late?

Some people can feel slightly anxious about getting to work on time and making sure that they are ‘seen’ to be clocking in at the right time (usually ahead of the required time). Others may casually enter the work place a little behind the normal start time but justify it with the work they possibly put in outside of regular office hours. Although these are two slightly different approaches what is the same is the fact that both are compelled to be present in the work place.

Presence at Work

In today’s workplace presence is still highly regarded. Despite the advancement of technology, smart phones, laptops, WiFi at home, tablets, VPN’s and many other helpful items, most people are compelled to turn up to the workplace. Although there is a growing trend of some people working part of the time at home it is still a minority activity at this point in time. Getting to work on time is not the only factor of  having a ‘Presence at Work’ many people clock off at exactly the finish time, but many others can stay late and continue to work, unfortunately just to be ‘seen’ or at times because they feel they need to catch up on the workload that seems to be every growing in today’s modern workplace. Although these are certainly not the only reasons, the point of raising these topics is to consider ‘Presence Over Performance’ and to ask the question do you really need to be ‘present’ to perform?

For some jobs the answer will of course be a big YES, some jobs you will need to be at the office, factory, hospital, to use machinery and specific on-site equipment,  For a lot of other jobs however the answer is becoming more and more a loud NO.

Performance at Work

A good question to consider is “If you have some really, really important work to do that you have to focus on, where would you go to do it?” Surprisingly if you think about the answer here, the reality is that very few people actually answer ‘the office’ or at ‘work’. Often at times of important work you focus on working from home or off-site in a meeting room or a conference room.

You may work best in a coffee shop or hotel lobby with background noise? A very common activity (if your workplace is okay with it) is that many modern workers wear earphones at work and listen to a whole host of things, music, sports, the radio, podcasts and a list of different content. In a busy office environment some people can even keep earphones in to help prevent interruptions to their day. The point here is that people are different and what works for some may not be ideal for others. The same can be said for open plan offices, some people love them and other loath them. There is great benefits to meeting with people in person and for interactions in the work place, but with today’s video conferencing options such as Google Hangouts, Skype, Go To Meeting, a lot of productive meetings can be conducted on-line from pretty much anywhere.

Focusing on performance

What we need to come back to here is performance. When we focus on performance and productive results the emphasis on where the work actually get’s completed changes. Today a lot of businesses are still focused on the amount of hours people work and this is interesting as the workplace changes and the nature of work changes. Knowledge workers and home working in particular is growing and where people work from is becoming less important in certain areas. Companies that focus on results, project completions and results are seeing better results than some clock watching / clocking in and clocking out style businesses. Flexible working is still spoken about, but in practice should be more advanced than it is today. Some people work better early in the day and some people are night owls, some people have families and children where flexible working can help with a work life balance better than many other items and some people like to vary their workplace location.

Flexibility in the work place

Free canteen food, slides in the office, bean bags and colourful furniture is one thing, but workers may consider flexible working as a real perk. If performance and results are the focus area and people are allowed a level of flexibility, this may help with a faster transition to the workplace of the future. There are many studies where machines, computers and algorithms can take over a lot of the more mundane jobs in the workplace and this may be true, we also see the increase in freelance workers and contract workers. Skilled employers and people with experience will always be in demand and as more and more millennials enter the workplace the ‘how we work’ may become much more important than the ‘where we we work’

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A post by Aisling Turner

Merrion Recruitment Ltd, Recruitment the Right Way