Redefining productivity in the workplace

It’s goes without saying that these past couple of years have brought about massive change to the entire world as we know it…

While there’s a lot of stuff we wish could return to “normal" some things never will and that’s not necessarily a bad thing… During this time of massive change and people having to stay at home, one thing that has changed for the better is that remote work is probably here to stay for the most part. 

While I think most of us are happy about this fact, it is important that we rethink and take a look at how to redefine productivity for the future in order to maximise our effectiveness in working from home, and living our best life possible while still maintaining good work relations. 

The 9-5 Is Dying As It Should:

The Classic 9-5 for most of us is dying as it should: more and more people are becoming aware that they can be just as productive at home as they are at the office and thus most employees are opting to negotiate working from home from now on; and some are taking a stand to stay working form home if companies are asking employees to return to the office. While others are even leaving their jobs if they are not allowed to stay working from home and forced to return to the offices. 

The 9-5 was established by the man Henry Ford who founded the Ford Motor company. He created essentially created the 5 day work week and the 9-5 for his employees and had this to say about it:  “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege.” This allowed them some time off and a weekend where the employees also had the time to buy and drive the cars they were producing which could be seen as fuelling  economic growth.

The Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 standardised the 9-5 and became the working standard ever since. But that was during the time when most labor was manual labour, and generally output was exactly equal the the input (time) given. This has very much changed as the type of work we do now has drastically shifted from all manual labour to a lot of cognitive and mental labor such as programming, designing and marketing etc.

These jobs do not have that same one to one ratio of input and output that was present in all the previous intensive manual labour jobs; where most things were made by hand and not machine. So for that time and that kind of work it made sense to structure the hours of work the way they did. Since our work has changed, and our productivity and production changed as well, we should therefore relook at the 9-5 and see how we should change it to better suit the times we find ourselves in while retaining productivity.

Working Remotely Is Becoming Standardised:

Working remotely has really taken off due to the great resignation and everything happening in the world right now, but remote work has been around for many years now… Tim Ferris talked about working remotely in his book the 4 hour work week which was written back in 2007. He even gave us a blueprint on how we can slowly start to transition ourselves in order to work remotely. From asking your boss if you can for the next week work from home as a trail period to see if working remotely will work for both of you. If after that week your boss is still pleased with your productivity, you can slowly start making the move to work from home. Then eventually you can move to Bali where you can work from your laptop and be completely location independent. This sounded pretty out there when some of us first read it and maybe even like a dream, but for a lot of us this dream can become a reality much sooner than we would have ever imagined as we find ourselves in the perfect opportunity and time to make this transition. 

The Changed View Of Productivity For The Future: 

Productivity will be viewed differently in the future and will shift from looking at hours worked per day to actual output made in the day, in whatever field it is you are working in, be it programming, graphic design, marketing, and so on.  Studies about office productivity has shown that employees individual productivity is compromised due to a number of factors that take a significant part of their working day such as: 16% of their time spent on emails; 11% on useful and/or productive meetings; 11% of on administrative tasks; 10% on wasteful meetings; 8% on non-essential interruptions; and 5% on everything else, i.e. coffee breaks, bathroom breaks, etc.

The percentages of these may vary from company to company respectively, but there is not denying that there is an astronomical amount of time spent on tasks not relating to the jobs these employees are actually paid to do; and most are just miscellaneous admin tasks that should be systematised by the company. 

Productivity While Working From Home
(Big Business Fears About Productivity Decreasing Is A Myth):

Most companies have varies reasons for wanting employees to return to the office, one of the biggest contributing factors to this is that the company feels there is less means to completely monitor the productivity of the employees (even if some companies have enforced that their employees install tracking software on their computer to monitor how often they use their computers, what sites they access etc,). This not only should be viewed as an invasion of personal privacy, it should and will decrease employee moral as the employees feel that their employers do not trust them. Companies do not want to give their employees a window of opportunity to slack off which makes sense and is understandable, however, those that do slack off when being allowed to work from home, were probably already slacking off at their office job, by means of doing procrastinating busy work tasks etc and not doing work. The employees that were actually being pro will also most likely still keep doing as they were doing while working at the office, as this is the type of person they are, they are just in a different environment. This should reveal to companies which employees are the ones actually doing the work and those that are not. So this should be a win win for the companies in this regard.

Work From Home Productivity Stats: 

Several studies were conducted over the past few months on remote work and productivity and the results are rather interesting… We just mentioned some of the factors that contribute to employees being unproductive during the working day, here are some stats on the productivity of working from home and a lot of these improved productivity aspects are due to the absence of these distractions of the office space, quite ironic if you think about it. Several sources and surveys point towards a definite increase in productivity shown by those who started working from home. For example In 2021, 70% of employees who worked from home report that their virtual meetings are less stressful, and 64% now prefer hybrid meetings according to a report by Owl Labs.

The Pros And Cons Of Working From Home:

Some of the pros of working from home are, less water cooler talk, no commute to and from work, generally less admin related tasks, and so on. This also allows people working from home to be able to take more breaks, spend more time with their family and making time for hobbies as well as more time for exercise; which all contributes to a more balanced and happy life for the employee and when that happens, when we take care of all the aspects of our lives, we will in turn be able to perform better at work. 

However there are also some cons to working from home, such as less social interaction that could lead to feelings of loneliness and depression, there are potentially more distractions at home to keep you procrastinating and not working, and poor internet connections making working remotely more difficult for some. 

The Importance Of Building A Portfolio Or Personal Brand Now To Work Remotely:  

With all this said, it is important to mention that in order stack the deck in our favour and truly take ahold of the opportunities offered to us in this time we should focus on improving our work portfolio and start creating a form of a personal brand, in order to show companies our value and what we bring to the table thereby giving us more leverage to negotiate working from home and increased salaries. Improving our portfolio should be pretty easy to do if you have already done it before. Start by going through your old portfolio and see where you can take out old outdated work and add new more professional and improved examples that reflect your current skill level in your occupation.

Creating a personal brand however can seem like a very daunting and broad task; but it can be as simple as creating a website and creating an online portfolio of your work, using the same examples from your actual portfolio; or creating a weekly blog post, and writing about your experiences in your industry and so on. The purpose of your personal brand is to let others see your work and see what value you provide. This will intern work in your favour when applying to work at a different company, helping you to negotiate your salary as the company is more aware of your skillset. It may seem like a lot of work, but it will pay off in the long run. 

How To Stay Productive While Working From Home, Tips And Final Thoughts:

Once you have landed your working from home job or have negotiated with your current employer to work from home, it is important to keep productivity high while working from home to validate that this was a good move to your employers. Some key ways to stay productive while working from home are: 

Creating space that is conducive to work, and are devoid of distractions. If you are fortunate enough to have a room you can dedicate to creating an office space out of, do so. If your office is in your bedroom for example, make sure to you remove all forms of distraction. Be intentional with creating an environment that is conducive to work. 

Keep organised and create a system. It is important to keep organised while working from home and keep your environment neat and tidy as a clean work area helps you to feel more mentally clear. 

Make sure to take sufficient breaks and get enough fresh air to think creatively and stay focused.

Schedule and prioritise the tasks of the day and plan everything out be be more efficient and have more clarity on what is expected of you for each day. 

Once you have created a system and have solidified some of these into habits, you will start to fine tune your own work processes and save more time and become more effective.

I hope this blog post was helpful and gave you some insight into how to prepare yourself for remote work and give you the tools to leverage working from home more efficiently and live a more balanced life. 

If you liked this blog post, be sure to check out my youtube channel for the vide version of this and much more…

Till next time, by bye friends.