Flatten the curve – you know what the productivity curve is flattening. For people who are working from home, taking care of children & elderly and doing house work (cooking, cleaning & maintaining household) , it is becoming overwhelming. There has been no time expansion and energy is contracting with every passing day. The line between home and work is nearly invisible.
I have heard multiple cases where managers are texting late into night regarding work, asking to work on weekends, basically being answerable whenever the manager feels like questioning. This is insensitive behaviour. From the managers angle, they can’t see what the employees are doing through the day and think that if they are able to extract the answers at any given time, it will imply that the employee was doing the job. Managers having trust issues and unorganised work patterns are the ones exhibiting the above mentioned behaviour.
A manager’s organisation & priority skills are going to be exposed. Communication traits & self-discipline habits of employees are going to be exposed. Many leaders advocate over communication. Pre Corona that had its own merits. Cut to today, over communication can become overwhelming for an employee. The number of virtual meetings are adding to stress and anxiety of employees across borders. Just because it’s virtual does not imply that an employee can have back to back meetings through the day.
It is a tough situation, the employers want to ensure work is getting done and employees are finding these meetings are getting in the way of getting things done.
After brain storming with many here is a handy list of useful practices that firms can adopt:
- Keep common fixed hours where all employees are available online to all stake holders (managers, co-workers, HR, team members – anyone). For an all India time zone company for example it can be 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM. Don’t have early morning or very late meetings – remember that most of your employees are working without any house help, perhaps need to attend to their kids and elderly at home.
- When the above gets fixed, the employee gets some freedom on how to utilise rest of his time. Early risers can finish work in the morning, night owls can do their work at night. Both groups however are present in the said slot to ensure whatever needs to be asked, co-ordinated is done smoothly.
- Install work trackers and educate employees on importance of updating work trackers on a timely basis.
- Set protocols as to what needs to be done in case of power failure and internet failure.
- Meeting needs to follow a strict agenda – avoid discussing another project just because the set agenda has been completed.
- 1:1 catch ups with all employees needs to happen at least every 15 days. Managers should use this time for using coaching conversations to help their team members enhance productivity and work enthusiasm.
- Everyone needs to take personal responsibility of adhering to processes & protocols that are set. At times these may be unappealing but don’t complain about them if you have not followed them. The ones who set processes & protocols needs to take feedback on a consistent basis so that inefficiencies are eliminated.
These are just some of the practices that could help deal with the flattening productivity curve. At the end of the day, being human is going to matter the most. If you feel your employees are not displaying desired productivity, have an honest look at yourself and your communication, management & leadership style.