Four Things That Impact Productivity More Than Hours Worked

As worldwide stress reaches an all time high, a relentless talent crisis increases pressure on individual workers, and calls for a full-time return to the office get louder, something is happening. Trust is rescinding and suspicion is rising. In the face of uncertainty, a growing number of organisations are reverting to traditional views of employee commitment and productivity: the number of hours visibly spent at a desk. In this blog we unpack this phenomenon to highlight the the four productivity drivers leaders really need to focus on.

After all we’ve learned, can we still say flexibility is a barrier to productivity? Would more time actually solve all your problems? Are there other more intangible, yet fundamental, cultural building blocks lacking?

OC Tanner’s 2022 Global Culture Report found that when employees feel less connected to their workplace and culture, the likelihood of great work falls by 90%. We think it’s worth taking a look at the things you can’t see or measure as easily as time and place, but are felt by your people and profoundly affect their productivity.

Shifting to an outcome-based culture

The backbone of our Execution Practice is the fact that 80% of results come from just 20% of activity, yet remarkable results remain elusive and employees overwhelmed because amongst constant change, many organisations still focus on busyness and presence than what is most important.

More dedicated time does not automatically equate to more dedicated employees. Conflating hours worked with productivity or commitment is a grave error of management, however it is one that stubbornly  persists today because presence = productivity is one of the hardest assumptions to break.  In fact, the lack of trust in worker productivity is so pervasive with the move to more flexible, hybrid working it has led to what Microsoft researchers call ‘productivity paranoia’: “where leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, number of meetings, and other activity metrics have increased.”

Outcome-based cultures are driven by the understanding that results speak louder than presence, setting out clear objectives but enabling people to achieve them in a way that suits them. 

With Gallup’s 2023 Global State of the Workplace report finding that 59% of the workforce are quiet quitting (and 18% more actively and confrontationally ‘loud quitting’) the growing employee resistance to  long hours, blurred boundaries and lack of understanding is an inevitability to employers who maintain the cynical standpoint that workers will not deliver unless watched or mandated. 

Four critical productivity drivers:

First things first for businesses today is behaving in a way that makes their employees care about them, rather than just being indebted to them. People’s eyes have been opened to a different way of working and living, and they now require a more meaningful reason for committing to what they do every day. 

Whether you’re considering a shorter week, adopting more flexibility or seeking to understand why more time in the office isn’t equalling more results, here are four things that impact productivity and help your employees work smarter- and happier:

1. Purpose

Productive people are able to feel the impact that they have. This is only possible when the wider organisational  strategy is distilled into the fulfilling work people carry out every day to achieve it. 

However recent research by McKinsey shows there is still work to be done in this area, with frontline employees three times less likely than leaders to say that they can see a connection between their daily work and the organisational “bigger picture”.  The highest level of performance always comes from people who are emotionally engaged, and that can’t happen if they don’t know if they’re 1) doing something that matters and 2) winning at that thing.

If all we do every day is firefight and get swept up in the day job, motivation to push ourselves just isn’t there. That’s why you need what at FranklinCovey we call the whirlwind +1. Something additional that elevates, unlocks and galvanises your people towards a common goal; something that is meaningful, measured weekly and agreed by the team.

Ultimately, the unwavering, every day productivity your organisation needs cannot thrive when work is a test of endurance. Quality outcomes are driven not just by time, but by igniting the “burning yes” inside individuals that empowers their ability  to say “no” to other things, focuses and motivates them to offer their discretionary effort- even when it’s a slog to do so. 

2. Trust

Trust is the one thing that changes everything, and nothing works without it. Including competitive, modern ways of working such as “work from anywhere” and four day work week policies. 

Just as the unprecedented move to working from home saw many leaders increase surveillance of their teams, a shortened week would heighten the challenges low-trust cultures already experience. This includes the bureaucracy and unnecessary paper trails to second-guessing and micromanaging as employees are put under pressure to more prove their everyday diligence even more than hybrid working does already.

On the flip side, autonomy is a key driver of motivation and self-belief a powerful facilitator of innovation. A  2023 Slack Pulse survey of 10,000 workers found that employees who feel trusted are 1.3x more likely to put in more effort and 1.2x more likely to say they’ll go ‘above and beyond’.

When you combine that with accountability borne from high trust and mutually agreed expectations, you generate the conditions of transparency and clarity which reduce anxiety and enable people to focus on what really matters- to both them and the business.

3. Prioritisation

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Shorter, says this: “The four-day week is already here for most companies. It’s buried under a whole bunch of outmoded practices and bad meetings.”

Microsoft survey of 20,000 people in 11 countries, found that 81% of employees say it’s important that their managers help them prioritise their workload, but less than a third (31%) say their managers give clear guidance. This results in overflowing to-do lists, leaders losing touch with what their teams do day to day and employees feeling unable to say no to anything, and so burn out trying to do everything.

Great things happen when individuals have the trust and clarity needed to make high-impact decisions which give them the greatest return on both their time and their emotional investment. This involves equipping individuals with the skills to manage their time effectively and implementing a process of strategy execution at the organisational level which identifies the most important goal and engages all energy towards it.

4. Happiness

It’s official; happy people are productive people. A  large-scale study of nearly 1 million people has shown that happiness makes successful people, not the other way around. The research recently appeared in the Journal of Happiness Studies and was summed up by the authors in this MIT Sloan Management article.

The authors explain that happier employees are “healthier, have lower rates of absenteeism, are highly motivated to succeed, are more creative, have better relationships with peers, and are less likely to leave a company.” Strikingly, they also  tell us that the performance gap between the ‘happy’ and the ‘unhappy’ was more definitive than they ever expected, holding up even when accounting for status, gender, race, education and other demographics.

So, it sounds like happiness pays dividends. But how do you influence it? The World Happiness Report 2021 finds that having a supportive manager became the largest predictor of happiness during the pandemic, above even flexibility, belonging and purpose.

Emotional intelligence in management has never been more essential. A worker who feels misunderstood or overlooked is not going to give their effort as freely as one who feels valued as a person, not just a resource.

Productivity and flexibility go hand in hand

One day less at work might force a streamlining of processes and a shift in attitudes, but it’s not a future-proof fix that can make up for a lack in the more fundamental areas that fulfil people. Likewise, subscribing to the belief that productivity and work flexibility cannot go hand in hand is a fast track to attrition. 

Productivity is an inner discipline which leaders either inspire or diminish. When employees are trusted, supported and guided they bring the independent will to prioritise, to make a difference, to do themselves and others proud.

Whatever your business model, competitive companies will want to empower employees to stress less, live more and achieve more. Resist the urge to solely manage what you can easily measure and instead focus on aligning individual needs with business outcomes.

Move Your Team Further, Faster, Together- Wherever They Are

Trust isn’t just a nice to have which makes people happier; It is a tangible and measurable performance multiplier. Our newly updated, world-renowned course Leading at the Speed of Trust® can help you build a culture of trust and propel your team further, faster, together- wherever they are. Click here to find out more.