Productivity theater: bosses believe workers are less productive at home, according to...

[PEnnn]

Pure projection. A thief thinks everyone else is also a thief.

(Old Chinese proverb)

 

[Rocky4040]

Many managers have difficulties with adoption to new standards. Most of them are usually older and because of that not very flexible, they have build a process where personal involvement were important part of evaluation and have issues in adjusting those processes, which leads them to believe productivity is worse.
Eventually this will lead to a better place - new procedures and kpi will come to place, more innovative ideas will surface as people will try to streamline and automatize repetitive tasks and focus on actual issues.
We took a first step and more will follow no matter what poor managers will think about that. And good managers will thrive.

New standards no not really. These were put into place because Covid was raging on the world. The Covid scare is about over now and it's time for slackers to get back to work. If you want a job then it's probably a good idea to follow the companies guide lines as to what THEY WANT NOT what you want after THEY are paying your wage and trust me THEY are in full control. They can fire your *** pretty much at any time so who has the control.

If you say you do then your living in a dream world if you say oh I'll go get another job and they will be sorry I left. Well trust me for every Karen that leaves a job there are 100's more people able to fill your spot and probably some will even work for less money because they want to feed their families and are proud to be providing for their families. OMG Gen Z pisses me off with their holier than thou attitudes lol.

 

[Rocky4040]

Oops!

"US labor productivity tumbled by 7.5% in the first quarter of 2022 – the largest decline in worker output per hour since 1947, according to Labor Department data released Thursday.

Unit labor costs, or how much workers are paid per unit of output, surged by 11.6% during the quarter. That reflects a 3.2% increase in hourly compensation and a 7.5% decrease in productivity...."

Yep they want more pay but want to do less work for that pay. They would prefer to stay at home work less and sit in their comfy couch in their slippers and house robe than get up get dressed go to work and earn an honest days pay. in the heat of covid a lot fo people had no choice but to stay home and try and work and make a pay cheque all the while to world was going crazy.

Well the world is still going crazy but for different reasons than Covid because Covid is mostly in our rear view mirrors now. They still want to stay home and work and make bigger pay for sitting as I said in their robes and slippers sipping on coffee and probably got cartoons on as well even though the kids are probably in school or day care. They got a taste of the easy life and are trying to hold on to that non productive work life.

Well little kiddies it's time to put the pants on shave and drive to the office and be a big boy like your daddy was or is and show up on time for work. These Gen Z workers are pretty sad really they want it all but want to do nothing to earn it.

 

[dangh]

New standards no not really. These were put into place because Covid was raging on the world. The Covid scare is about over now and it's time for slackers to get back to work. If you want a job then it's probably a good idea to follow the companies guide lines as to what THEY WANT NOT what you want after THEY are paying your wage and trust me THEY are in full control. They can fire your *** pretty much at any time so who has the control.

If you say you do then your living in a dream world if you say oh I'll go get another job and they will be sorry I left. Well trust me for every Karen that leaves a job there are 100's more people able to fill your spot and probably some will even work for less money because they want to feed their families and are proud to be providing for their families. OMG Gen Z pisses me off with their holier than thou attitudes lol.

Nah, I was working 1-3 days from home, as most of my colleagues in large software company way before pandemic happened. So there is no slackers, and there is no reason to go back to office - because 'back to work' means I'm in my home office working on my tasks and innovate our products.
I want my job and I have my job, and my company guidelines telling me that I'm doing great. There is reason why we're in top 500.
And no, I do not live in barbaric country, so no one can fire me any time. If they want to fire me, they need to give me the reason, 3 months salary and so on - but why would they do that if everything works as good as always?

Technology changes all the time, and with such - keeping office work standards created 100 years ago have absolutely no sense in today's world only, because some narrowminded people can't adjust. And even I, from generation X, can properly adjust to better and more efficient ways of doing things, no matter what some boomers would like to say.

 

[Endymio]

I do not live in barbaric country, so no one can fire me any time. If they want to fire me, they need to give me the reason, 3 months salary and so on

If you wish to fire your employer (quit), are you required to give them a valid reason, pay them 3 months of your salary, and so on? Why not?

 

[dangh]

If you wish to fire your employer (quit), are you required to give them a valid reason, pay them 3 months of your salary, and so on? Why not?

I see you have no idea how normal agreement between employee and employer works. If I wish to quit I need to give them heads up and I still need to work for - depends on my time within the company - from 1 to 8 weeks (depends as well on specific country regulation, agreement, reasons for quitting - I.e. gross misconduct can lead to immediate firing without notice period).
I do not pay them salary when I work, so when I quit nothing changes, you silly I'm expected to close my tasks, give my responsibilities to a new person, and then do a transition to my new workplace (or whatever I want to do).
So yes, responsibility is on both sides, so both parties have legal protection. That is answering your 'why not' hopefully, or it is as well too modern?

 

[passwordistaco]

"87% of staff say working from home increases productivity, but 85% of their supervisors disagree"

Sounds like a classic case of "I'm OK, everybody else is screwed up", all around.

 

[waclark]

I see you have no idea how normal agreement between employee and employer works. If I wish to quit I need to give them heads up and I still need to work for - depends on my time within the company - from 1 to 8 weeks (depends as well on specific country regulation, agreement, reasons for quitting - I.e. gross misconduct can lead to immediate firing without notice period).
I do not pay them salary when I work, so when I quit nothing changes, you silly I'm expected to close my tasks, give my responsibilities to a new person, and then do a transition to my new workplace (or whatever I want to do).
So yes, responsibility is on both sides, so both parties have legal protection. That is answering your 'why not' hopefully, or it is as well too modern?

In the US you will normally get walked to the door when you quit, especially if you're going to the company's competitor. Even if you give 2 weeks notice which is the general custom here.

In many states the company can fire you for any reason they choose including, we just wanted to fire you. These are generally right to work states where you have no obligation to join a union if one exists at your place of employment.

I think the point being made is why should a company be obligated to pay severance, or give you a valid reason and so on when the employee can just up and walk out the door? I cannot imagine being forced to work for a company for 8 weeks if it's a terrible place to work.

So, no, in the US, both sides do not have any obligation to each other outside of any Union agreements that may or may not be in place. Even then, a union employee can walk off the job if he/she wants to. You cannot force a man to work when he doesn't want to.

 

[Vanderlinde]

Oh look, telemetry of MS coming to stats now.

 

[bwbeam]

My wife has been doing physician billing from home and has received a pay raise since starting it , some people may be not as productive but there are a lot like my wife who get the work done

 

[lonetac]

We are a fortune 500 company and had our most profitable year ever by embracing WFH.

Most tech folks dont need to be in the office and its quite easy to measure their productivity based on their performance. How about be a real manager, set some real goals and hold people accountable to those goals. Jobs need to shift to being performance based, not minute by minute based watching over their shoulder making sure they stare at their monitor for the 8 hours a day. If I can get my work done in 7, who cares. Folks in the office just pretend they work hard and become good actors. Not to mention how much time they waste chit chatting, distractions, commutes, etc.

Reality is a lot of wfh folks work longer and harder than office goers as we skip lunches and breaks, communal breaks, faking working to give the impression we are busy and we tend to start earlier and stay later as the separation of work and life is less visible.

Treat people like humans, not robots.

Use your manager skills to measure a employees performance. A happy employee is a productive one.

 

[nvidiagreed]

In context: Does your boss think you spend all day 'working' from home in your dressing gown, taking regular breaks to stuff your face/get drunk/watch Pornhub? They aren't alone in believing that remote work makes employees less efficient. According to a new study from Microsoft, 85% of bosses are convinced that home comforts make staff less productive, and that's causing 'productivity theater.'

Many studies have been carried out on working from home and how it impacts productivity. Nearly all of them show that the increased happiness felt by employees translates into more efficient staff, but it seems managers don't agree.

A new study from Microsoft illustrates how the views of workers and their bosses differ significantly: 87% of staff say working from home increases productivity, but 85% of their supervisors disagree. Bosses believe the move to remote/hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.

While working from home was once a privilege enjoyed by few, the pandemic saw most of the world wave goodbye to daily commutes. With the lockdowns gone, some companies are trying to bring their staff back to pre-2020 work arrangements. Several big firms, including Tesla and Apple, are facing massive pushback over their return-to-office mandates.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC that higher-level staff need to overcome the fear that employees are unproductive at home. "We have to get past what we describe as 'productivity paranoia' because all of the data we have shows that 80% plus of the individual people feel they're very productive — except their management thinks that they're not productive. That means there is a real disconnect in terms of the expectations and what they feel," Nadella told the BBC.

Future Forum Pulse survey

Part of the problem is that managers say they no longer have the visual clues that show who is working hard, relying instead on software-based metrics. In some cases, fear of being fired has led to 'productivity theatre,' in which, for example, workers randomly move their mouse pointers to show they're online, or they join worthless Zoom meetings. Ironically, it's estimated that people waste almost an hour per day on this digital presenteeism, meaning employees are being less productive by trying to appear more productive.

As part of the study, Microsoft surveyed 20,000 staff from 11 countries and analyzed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, along with LinkedIn labor trends and Glint People Science findings.

It's not just bosses who think staff perform better in the office; a survey in May showed many people believe their colleagues are not being productive at home.

A lot of employees say they would rather quit their job than go back into the office and are willing to take pay cuts and lose benefits if it means staying at home.

One of the few studies to claim remote work threatened productivity and innovation came last year. Somewhat surprisingly, Microsoft was the company behind the findings.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96097-microsoft-study-shows-bosses-think-workers-less-productive.html

The bosses would know, they are the most useless, least productive people in every company.

No boss works nearly as hard as the janitors or lowest level employees. Especially the ceo's who cant even explain the procedures or specific duties of each department.

Nah, instead they go out for business meetings, charge it to the company card, and remain the single biggest burden to carry of any slacking employee while also being the single biggest financial burden to the companies they work for.

The thing I love about working from home is not having to type nonsense into the pc to look busy, because I am expected to work constantly despite my bosses inability to give me more tasks to do.

Ive had to work slower and pace myself to get down to their level. Dont mind me now I have to explain to my boss how to do a task everyone else in the department can do with their eyes closed. See ya

 

[nvidiagreed]

New standards no not really. These were put into place because Covid was raging on the world. The Covid scare is about over now and it's time for slackers to get back to work. If you want a job then it's probably a good idea to follow the companies guide lines as to what THEY WANT NOT what you want after THEY are paying your wage and trust me THEY are in full control. They can fire your *** pretty much at any time so who has the control.

If you say you do then your living in a dream world if you say oh I'll go get another job and they will be sorry I left. Well trust me for every Karen that leaves a job there are 100's more people able to fill your spot and probably some will even work for less money because they want to feed their families and are proud to be providing for their families. OMG Gen Z pisses me off with their holier than thou attitudes lol.

You for sure are doing this during your work hours and the least hard working person in your company.

Good riddance, completely replaceable middle management with superiority complex

 

[nvidiagreed]

We are a fortune 500 company and had our most profitable year ever by embracing WFH.

Most tech folks dont need to be in the office and its quite easy to measure their productivity based on their performance. How about be a real manager, set some real goals and hold people accountable to those goals. Jobs need to shift to being performance based, not minute by minute based watching over their shoulder making sure they stare at their monitor for the 8 hours a day. If I can get my work done in 7, who cares. Folks in the office just pretend they work hard and become good actors. Not to mention how much time they waste chit chatting, distractions, commutes, etc.

Reality is a lot of wfh folks work longer and harder than office goers as we skip lunches and breaks, communal breaks, faking working to give the impression we are busy and we tend to start earlier and stay later as the separation of work and life is less visible.

Treat people like humans, not robots.

Use your manager skills to measure a employees performance. A happy employee is a productive one.

I completely agree sir but the aging dinosaurs who are afraid to be made useless by people half their age in this post dont understand performance or statistics.

 

[nvidiagreed]

If these bosses are so good at their jobs they would have some sort of metric other than 'feelings' for performance yes?

They would have developed some kind of system for measuring work output in a billion dollar company yes?

Guess theyre too busy not doing the only thing that constitutes their positions while patting themselves on the back. Shame...