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October 20, 2021
Adapting to yet another change in work practices — this time the shift from 100% remote work to a hybrid schedule — necessitates a more expansive definition of productivity. For hybrid work, research shows that productivity needs to encompass individual well-being, social connections and collaboration.
Microsoft’s The New Future of Work report confirms the hybrid work model presents a whole new set of questions and challenges for employers and their employees. Workers need to assess the best place to carry out different aspects of their jobs, teams must determine how to collaborate and make the best use of in-office time, and employers have to figure out how to run hybrid meetings, for example. In this scenario, simple measures of productivity will no longer suffice.
Hundreds of researchers from Microsoft, LinkedIn and GitHub formed the New Future of Work initiative in a bid to improve in-office and hybrid work practices. By conducting more than 50 research projects, the group came up with a number of recommendations to improve hybrid work practices.
Method: Researchers estimated worker productivity using two types of data: self-reported worker data (asking employees if they feel productive) and worker activity data (counting the number of emails sent or lines of code written).
Findings:
Key takeaway: It may be tempting to equate higher levels of employee activity with business success. But doing so risks overlooking the factors conducive to long-term innovation. It’s important to redefine productivity in a way that factors in the challenges of hybrid work. This can be done focusing on individual well-being and on the social connections that spur innovation.
Based on Microsoft’s cross-company research initiative, here are some ways managers can embrace a more expansive view of productivity in a hybrid work setting by prioritizing collaboration, well-being and innovation.
Under the old definition of productivity, coordinating teams around individual work schedules might have seemed unnecessary. But redefining productivity for hybrid work requires striking a compromise among individual and team needs. To foster collaboration under hybrid work:
Remote and in-person work each have their own pros and cons. Instead of expecting the same outcomes from both, leaders should build on what makes each one unique. To foster well-being under hybrid work:
The conditions needed to precipitate innovation under hybrid work can only be accomplished by thinking of productivity more expansively. To foster innovation under hybrid work:
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