Burnout among knowledge workers is a widespread occurrence and a driving factor in The Great Resignation and Great Reshuffle movements afflicting many businesses.

1. 4/28/22, 2:42 PM The Productivity Myth: How Modern Enterprises Are Getting Work Wrong
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The Productivity Myth: How Modern Enterprises Are
Getting Work Wrong
Burnout among knowledge workers is a widespread occurrence and a driving factor in The Great
Resignation and Great Reshuffle movements afflicting many businesses.
Burnout and hybrid working circumstances have sparked rising worries among many CEOs about
their staff’s productivity, particularly their knowledge workers. Businesses have responded to this
trend by loosening limitations on when and where employees can work. In many situations,
productivity was maintained or even increased during the depths of the Covid crisis simply by
changing commute time to work time and eliminating the social distractions inherent in typical office
environments.
However, it is doubtful that productivity based on these elements can be sustained in the long run.
Entrepreneurs have recognized these growing problems and are developing new technologies for
monitoring knowledge worker productivity in today’s geographically dispersed, virtual-first,
asynchronous workplace. Regrettably, many, if not all, of these tools are built on faulty principles. The
productivity of knowledge workers is fundamentally ambiguous and nearly hard to assess. The
following fallacies underpin the tools that profess to do so.
Myth 1: Workplace activity is a metric for productivity
Productivity is easy to quantify when it results in manufacturing or delivering real products, such as
automobile manufacturing or cable box installation. It is difficult to quantify when it results in the
generation or distribution of information or is intended to affect human behavior. Collaboration
activity metrics are much more problematic. Excessive dependence on tools may actually work
against the productivity gains expected by the technologies.
Myth 2: Time utilization is a measure of productivity
By Swapnil Miahra - April 27, 2022

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There is a prevalent belief that specific ways of spending time are extremely productive, while others
are only slightly effective. Concentrating on a single task over an extended period of time, as
demonstrated by the usage of a single business application or the time committed to a single
project, is often regarded to be a productive use of time. Meetings, exchanging text messages, and
processing email are typically regarded as necessary evils that obstruct actual work. However, a
substantial amount of productive work may be performed through a lively exchange of conversations
among a geographically distributed team.
Also Read: Four Approaches to Retain IT Talent after the Great Resignation
Myth 3: Knowledge workers can assess their own productivity.
Survey instruments are regularly used to ascertain how satisfied individuals are with various sorts of
activity. There is a widespread belief that job contentment is connected to job productivity and hence
that a contented employee is a productive employee. Regrettably, there is little empirical support for
this assumption.
Myth 4: The time and effort of knowledge workers are closely tied to financial business outcomes
This is one of the most disappointing and difficult myths to embrace, as IT [professionals well
understand.
While IT companies constantly deliver new capabilities to their business partners, it is up to the
partners to maximize revenue and profit. Due to the difficulty in correlating financial results to the
efficiency of knowledge labor, a number of the operational indicators that are typically used to assess
the productivity of software engineering teams, accounting departments, and contact centers, cannot
be taken as correct. If financial measurements are first indicators of business performance, and
operational metrics are second-order indicators, employee activity, time utilization, and job
satisfaction are at best tertiary indicators of business success.
These so-called productivity tools may give valuable information about how employees use their time
and engage with co-workers but fail to measure productivity. The attempts managers make to boost
their team’s productivity through these technologies are fruitless.
At the end of the day, it’s a comfort level, a work life balance and job satisfaction that make a
satisfied employee.
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Swapnil Miahra
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