By CEO: Ludmila Baklanova
The numbers are sobering. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity plummeted in the first two quarters of 2022. Contrast that dire economic landscape with earlier quarterly productivity measurements, which trended towards sustained growth, and it’s easy to understand the worry gripping a lot of companies these days. Per hour of work, employees are getting less work done, and this is despite the fact that 71% of adults, aged 25 to 49 years old, are fully vaccinated and that employment has been rising steadily since May 2020. So what’s behind the disconnect between employment trends, worker welfare, and productivity?
HOW DID WE BECOME LESS PRODUCTIVE?
The causes of the decline in American productivity are varied, debatable, and not fully understood. Much has been made of employee burnout after massive layoffs in early 2020 following Covid lockdowns and large-scale transitions to remote work where work-life balances were shattered and isolation took its mental toll. Then there was the Great Resignation, which, in hindsight turned out to be more of a Great Reshuffling as employees left jobs they disliked and took employment elsewhere. Some have argued that stimulus money and generous unemployment benefits created a false sense of security among workers. Some came to believe that they had been working too hard all along and would be rewarded by the government for doing nothing because the US economy is too big to fail.
BAND-AID SOLUTIONS IGNORE YOUR UNIQUE NEEDS
If we can be certain about anything, it is that the recent fall in productivity is attributable to many causes and not just one. And, this makes it particularly difficult to address head-on since some of these causes lie outside of employers’ control. But it would be unwise to do nothing and simply wait and hope for things to change. The best businesses are actively seeking ways to get more out of their staff and keep them motivated and engaged without working them so hard. So, they burn out quickly and either become less productive, quietly quit, or give their two weeks’ notice. Some solutions yield better results than others, but really every organization is unique and so the strategies that increase productivity for one company may do little for another.
Ironically, some time-saving behaviors that are commonplace in most offices may actually be hurting productivity without anyone being aware.
TOO MUCH EMAIL
Email is the de facto method of communicating among all kinds of groups, not just businesses, and it is easy to see why. Writing allows us to express more clearly what we need to say and to revise it before sending it out to make sure it is both accurate and clear. It is also communication on our own terms, where we control the conversation. In addition, every email is a kind of paper trail, proof that we sent the information or made the request, or gave critical feedback. In an age of increased accountability for the actions of the lowest- to the highest-level employees, email acts as a kind of safety net should we ever need to prove to our supervisor (or to HR) that we did or did not say something.
However, anyone who has to spend time sifting through their inbox, struggling to reply to all the messages that pop up by the dozen every hour, knows that email is one of the most unpleasant tasks of the day. An overflowing inbox is easily ignored (you know you’ve done it too). This means that a message sent with the best intentions and filled with important, actionable information will lie sandwiched between a dozen other less urgent messages. Your email might not be read as quickly or with the level of attention its sender wished. When communication channels become clogged like this, interest and engagement fall, and before long, productivity begins to tumble too.
More insidious still is the way habitual email erodes or stunts the quality of our relationships with one another, and for any healthy business, relationships are everything. The very nature of our brains and the various ways humans are wired to prefer social interaction over isolation makes sending and reading emails the least conducive way to develop and maintain important bonds between individuals. Emails are just words, like the text of an instruction manual, and as such, there is little except for their implied urgency to get us to act promptly upon their contents.
PHONE CALLS ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN EMAIL
A phone call, on the other hand, is something that high-performing teams prefer over email and use to their advantage. Not only does a phone call connect people in real-time to accomplish something right then and there during the call, which is about as productive as communication gets. It can also counteract employee burnout by providing human contact throughout an otherwise isolated day, especially for those working remotely. Even when every employee comes into the office, they can still feel cut off from one another when the expected mode of communication is through email or some other text-based system like Slack. Emojis and creative backgrounds cannot replace the unique sound of another person’s voice in our ears. Plus, a conversation forces us to think on the spot, invigorating our minds that easily stall to a crawl during the day when we keep our eyes glued to the screens above our keyboards. When we speak and listen to others at work, it also builds a stronger sense of belonging and improves team dynamics.
YOUR BUSINESS’S NEEDS ARE UNIQUE
What does your company need in order to lift productivity? If you’ve been struggling with this question and have tried a number of solutions only to see moderate to no gains in employee output, Optimize Tech Consulting has the resources and expertise to help you turn those numbers back up. By understanding your company as an individual with specific and unique qualities, we can tailor a success strategy just for you that can be reviewed and adjusted over time. It’s not too late to strengthen the dynamic among your employees and get back on track with growth and profit. But the economic downturn in the US and around the world is far from over, and worse times may be ahead for everyone. It is imperative that you take action sooner rather than later so that your business is well-positioned to ride out the bad weather and even use its winds to your advantage.
Let Optimize Tech Consulting show you how.