Rethinking productivity: how an outdated definition is contributing to an ongoing burnout crisis

As we continue to explore the brave new world of hybrid work, we have an urgent responsibility to rethink some of the prevalent core assumptions about work and rethink and design a better future. The real imperative is to reimagine a new paradigm of work rather than forcing new ways of doing things into old models that are no longer fit for purpose and are taking their toll on our wellbeing.

Where does the 40-hour, 5-day, 9-5 workweek come from? While we may be tempted to think it’s been this way since time immemorial, our current work rhythm and structure largely date back to the industrial era. Henry Ford is widely attributed as a leading pioneer in establishing the 40-hour, 5-day workweek as well as a minimum wage for his workers in the 1910s and 1920s. While these standards were an improvement for people, they weren’t completely magnanimous: Ford reasoned that with extra leisure time and more cash, his own employees could afford to buy and enjoy Ford cars themselves, thereby boosting sales.

What’s notable is that we take Ford’s pattern for granted without asking if it’s fit for purpose in our modern era. A number of brilliant voices such as Boston Consulting Group’s Debbie Lovich, Microsoft’s Alexia Cambon and Georgetown professor Cal Newport wisely suggest that the way we think about the workweek is antiquated and no longer fit for purpose.

Hybrid has given us the opportunity to reimagine the what and where of work, and followers of my content will also know that I encourage us to consider the who of work. But one thing that we also need to take account of as we reimagine the future of work is that the what of work really has changed – not so much in the transition from on-site, in-office work to hybrid, but from industrial to knowledge work.

Newport has gone so far to suggest that we’ve not really figured out the right models for knowledge work altogether, let alone this hybrid pattern for digital knowledge work. In fact, management guru Peter Drucker’s original concept of the knowledge worker is only just over 50 years old, and people have only been working as digitally-based knowledge workers for about 30 years at most.

Rethinking productivity in hybrid

We’ve gone through such drastic sea changes without figuring out what really works – partly, I suspect, because we’ve not yet accepted and reflectively unpacked how work has changed over the past century. According to Newport, we’ve struggled to specifically figure out productivity. It’s such a vital, taken-for-granted idea, but yet, we struggle to articulate what it means in our new era, much less how it’s changed and evolved from our industrial legacy. A century ago, you could quantifiably measure productivity based on outputs because the nature of the work was rather constant: how many cars rolled off the assembly line today? But in the age of knowledge work – especially digitally-enabled knowledge work with inconsistent, complex tasks – we’ve yet to pin down a robust, quantifiable definition for productivity.

In other words, productivity – and what it means – is in crisis. And given that we have conflicting understandings and definitions of productivity, perhaps it’s no surprise that according to Microsoft, companies are experiencing ‘productivity paranoia’ in the age of hybrid.

I think that part of the crisis stems from how we measured productivity when we were doing office-based knowledge work before the pandemic. I have a sneaking suspicion that productivity wasn’t necessarily measured in outputs, nor in quality of work, but erroneously by presence and hours worked. Of course, being at your desk doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting something done, nor does being away from your desk mean you’re not working.

I wonder if this is partly where productivity paranoia in the hybrid era is coming from. We’ve falsely mistaken presenteeism for productivity, and in lieu of being able to physically observe whether employees are at their desks, companies are mistakenly resorting to using surveillance software on their workers (and eroding trust among other negative effects in the process) or relying on other performances that give the appearance of being present and therefore ‘productive’.

How are we thinking about time in hybrid?

One of the acute dangers I see as we navigate hybrid is that we’ve taken a faulty definition of productivity linked to presence and hours worked into the hybrid age, where our boundaries between work and home have blurred and eroded. As an organisational anthropologist, I’m concerned that time – and how we think about it - is one of the key dimensions of our work experience that’s under pressure and strain.

In lieu of physical presence to perform the appearance of productivity, presenteeism has simply moved online. Giving the commute time back to work an extra hour at the beginning and end of each day, filling our diaries with back-to-backs to be visible in front of others (and for those who might check our calendars) – these are some of the hallmarks of employees in a culture that’s thinking about time in a dangerous manner.

I don’t know about you, but I always feel incredibly guilty when I’m trying to squeeze time for a call in a colleague’s diary and I’m piling on back-to-back calls, never mind possibly even a third or fourth call in a row. On more than one occasion, I’ve wondered if I’m giving that colleague time to take a break, reset their brain or get on with work I know they need to do.

I’m noticing a dangerous mentality we’re applying to our diaries where we look for ‘empty time’ to claim or tempo nullius, much like European colonisers labelled land in Asia, Africa and the Americas that was unclaimed by other Europeans as ‘empty land’ or terra nullius.

But what these understandings of ‘empty’ overlook is that they aren’t empty – there’s something there, whether that’s a colleague actually doing their work or taking an essential five minutes to reset between calls or to take a comfort break.

The pressure of back-to-backs, ‘filling empty time in the diary’ so that we appear busy or the performance of having a full diary is taking its toll on us – and I suspect it comes from this wider problematic and misled obsession around productivity and its manifestations in the hybrid world of performing productivity (rather than simply getting on with the work and focusing on quality and outputs).

A faulty definition of productivity is leading to paranoia productivity – and it’s making us sick

It would be one thing if our obsession with productivity was simply misinformed. But what’s upsetting is that it has real consequences on people when it comes to their wellbeing. For example, Sarah O’Connor in the Financial Times has noticed that work is making us ill. She points to increased rates of work-related stress, depression, anxiety and the ways that work is taking a psychological toll on us. Furthermore, she notes how work has intensified over the past 30 years, where we’re asked to do more challenging work – and more of it – with tighter deadlines.

Research teams at Microsoft conducted an experiment to explore the effects of back-to-back calls and breaks on worker stress levels and wellbeing. Their research found that back-to-back meetings cause stress to accumulate, rather than giving people time to reset. They also found that back-to-backs decrease focus and engagement – meaning that the quality of work in meetings during back-to-backs is likely poorer. Furthermore, transitions between meetings and ‘code switching’ between calls cause further stress.

I strongly suspect that these time pressures created by productivity paranoia in hybrid work are linked to and will likely cause more acute pressures when it comes to employee health and wellbeing. While human brains are incredibly powerful, they have their limitations, and our hybrid tempos and rhythms are placing strain on us in multiple directions. The end result is that we’re stretched too thin and aren’t able to give enough of our best to everything.

Suggestions for rethinking productivity and our approach to time for wellbeing

Something has to give – otherwise, we’ve got a disaster in the making right in front of us. We either need to change course on how we think about time and productivity or risk unprecedented rates of burnout and deteriorating wellbeing in the workforce which will ironically trigger a productivity catastrophe.

We desperately need to stop, think and ask ourselves: what does productivity look like for hybrid office workers?

It’s a huge question that needs an ongoing conversation and deliberate action to think and do things differently, and they tie into wider systemic and structural factors. There’s no easy answer here, nor will this kind of change come quickly and easily, but here are some suggestions to lay the essential groundwork for a course correction:

• Leaders set the tone. Like many things, this starts with leadership and getting their awareness and agreement that something is dangerously broken and in need of a rethink with potentially catastrophic consequences is a must. It’s the brave leaders who ask the question that will be at the forefront of this change and who have the most to win.
• If leaders are clear on their organisation’s priorities and move away from productivity paranoia, there’s a much better chance of the right attitudes filtering through the rest of the organisation.
• Likewise, they need to follow their own examples of what good looks like. As leaders, they should be the example par excellence, not be an exception to the rule.
• Critically evaluate how productivity is being defined and measured in your organisation. While we know the right things to say about presenteeism, it’s important to make sure that employees are assessed and incentivised by the quality of their work, not how full their diaries are or how many hours they spend online. Be robust in enforcing that standard in performance reviews and manager 1-1s and teaching them about the risk of proximity bias.
• Clarifying how you define productivity and what you’re measuring employees against can help curb productivity performativity and hopefully gives people the permission, headspace and assurance they need to focus on quality work, not looking busy.
• Embedding this new understanding into the systems and processes of your organisation is just as much of a must as leadership buy-in. Without operationalising a new standard in your processes, there’s a risk of great ideas having minimal effect.
• Clarify your expectations and ways of working for hybrid workers – especially around meetings. Microsoft Teams and Outlook have a useful feature to either finish your calls 5-10 minutes early or start 5-10 minutes later so that colleagues have scheduled breaks. It can make a real difference if and when colleagues need to string together a series of meetings where longer breaks aren’t possible.
• Alternatively, schedule dedicated Focus hours or Meeting hours. For those that need deep concentration to get complex work done, consider scheduling a few hours a day that are dedicated for focused work. Or on the flip side, you could consider doing what academics do and scheduling in dedicated time when you’re available for people to schedule in meetings.

Finally, let’s be honest. These three suggestions aren’t going to stop our forthcoming burnout crisis alone, but they’re a starting point for a wider conversation and reframing of what time and productivity look like for knowledge workers in the hybrid age.

There’s a lot of work and experimentation that needs to be done, but we first need to be aware that something is fundamentally broken and that the models that have worked in the past aren’t painfully unfit for our moment. Uncritically taking old models and assumptions of work to new contexts is a dangerous recipe for mass burnout.