Business leaders and futurists have been talking about how we need to change the way we work for some time. In fact, long before the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe, work life was already in transition, the prospect of working from home became attractive and practical for managers and employees. Our relationship with work has been reshaped by social, economic, and political influences, and, of course, by technology. Millennials are now the largest generation in the American workforce; in England, there are over a million more working mothers than 20 years ago; and the self-employed are now the fastest growing group on the European labor market. But despite these sweeping changes, the way we measure our work has stayed pretty much the same. We are still disproportionately focused on the hours we spend at work or online, and many of us are used to coming to back-to-back meetings and sharing status updates or internal notes, as this gives the feeling that everyone is "getting things done." ". But are we really? Not according to a study conducted by Vanson Bourne for Dropbox in early 2020, which he found that we were wasting 29% of our time at work on tasks that didn't add critical business value. Today, however, the pandemic is creating anxiety and increased background noise; in fact, even before lockdown began in the UK, more than six in XNUMX said they were feeling anxious. about the coronavirus. It's not just the constant news alerts, but millions of employees around the world are juggling childcare, homeschooling or other caregiving responsibilities. This creates an imperative for businesses to recognize reduced employee bandwidth and ensure valuable time is spent only on the most important tasks. For too long we have been locked into a time-based work model that places too much emphasis on how things get done, rather than what is ultimately achieved.
Let's measure what matters
Today, however, we have entered a moment that calls for managers to support their teams as they work in a fully distributed environment (which they are likely) the first time, and to innovate the way they do business. things. Now is the time to change our traditional ideas about productivity and adopt a results-based way of working. Expecting employees to be "on" during regular office hours has become silly and possibly impossible; Asking them to perform tasks that do not have a noticeable impact on the company's objectives will be a waste of the precious time we have left between taking care of ourselves and others. Instead, we will move on to what really matters for our business goals: production. What has been achieved? How does a task get us closer to our goals? What should we do next? These should be the key questions that measure our progress and help us choose how to spend our time. To make the change, we will need to help our teams prioritize and put unnecessary “work on the job” aside, allowing them to focus on the most important milestones and tasks. Then we have to trust them enough to set them free to work toward those goals through their own (reasonable) methods, tools, and timeframes.Ruthless hierarchy and freedom of concentration
To prioritize effectively, business leaders will need to ensure everyone is aligned on goals, creating touchpoints that keep team members on the same page. Leaders should also refer to team task lists and OKRs, and ask themselves "what can't we do?" to delve into what is really needed. Once we've aligned ourselves with our goals, managers need to prioritize the demands we make on our team's time so they have the space for in-depth work. As of April, Dropbox has seen a more than 2,000% increase in usage of our Zoom integration from February levels. People rushed to find solutions to the many synchronous communications we still need in this new world, but it is imperative to find a balance to allow for focus. I suggest asking "can this meeting be an email?", so that we only schedule meetings when absolutely necessary. I find the “inform, discuss or decide” model to be a useful guide. If it "notifies", that is, updates or provides information, it must be an email. If you are "chatting" (multiple parties share comments or views), this can be done through collaboration tools like Dropbox Paper or Slack. If you 'choose', make a key decision with a number of stakeholders, a meeting may be warranted. But use this time wisely and make sure everyone has the information they need ahead of time.Trust our teams.
Once teams are aligned on key milestones and we've prioritized the demands we've made on valuable people's time, we need to allow our team members to work in ways that suit them. It means trusting them to manage their own schedules, knowing that expectations are clear and controls are in place to ensure results. And if we allow employees to manage their schedules, we should also allow them to use the tools that work best for them. Today, the average employee is naturally more aware of the tools at her disposal in the world outside of work; As shown by a recent survey which found that 41% of UK workers have used Whatsapp for business purposes. Once employees feel confident in managing their own time and tools to achieve their business goals, we've paved the way for peak performance, and those results in turn lead to greater confidence in their managers—it's a circle of virtues. .The end of presenteeism
If we can take a results-based approach, these challenging times could bring a positive outcome to the workplace: a broad understanding that not everyone needs to be physically present for their professional presence to be felt. and personal and to move the dial in a business. goals. It will be a welcome change, signaling the end of an outdated stigma around contributions from remote workers. A third of remote and flexible workers surveyed by Deloitte in 2018 felt they were viewed as less important, while a quarter felt they had access to fewer opportunities and missed opportunities for progression and promotion. This could mean more opportunities for parents, freelancers, and anyone who wants flexibility, as well as more diverse and distributed teams, where everyone works toward the same goals, regardless of the constraints of an environment. traditional office The way we measure our work lives in terms of hours spent at a desk and ticking the boxes is an outdated concept that no longer fits our purpose. It reminds me of our QWERTY keyboards. Actually, there are more efficient and faster ways to type, but the reason the keyboard is set up this way today is that on older typewriters the most frequently used keys couldn't be next to each other. each other or they would cling. Now that the keys are no longer capturing, it's actually a very inefficient setup, but we're used to it not to change it. We have an opportunity to go back to the productivity drawing board. Let's not waste it.- Adrienne Gormley, Director of EMEA and Vice President of Global Customer Experience at Dropbox.