Bosses suffering productivity paranoia on hybrid working: Microsoft Work Trends Index

Australian bosses are suffering a severe case of ‘productivity paranoia’ even though their employees feel they are working harder than ever, according to a new ­report.

The ‘productivity paranoia’ illustrates that leaders feel work is not getting done and want people back in the office. Picture: iStock

Australian bosses are suffering a severe case of “productivity paranoia” even though their employees feel they are working harder than ever, according to a new ­report.

The disconnect between the 90 per cent of managers who say the shift to hybrid work has affected their confidence in workers’ productivity and the 85 per cent of workers who say they are productive is revealed in Microsoft’s latest Work Trends Index.

It also found higher levels of burnout in Australia than other countries, with 62 per cent of employees, compared with a global average of 48 per cent – and 66 per cent of managers, compared with 53 per cent globally – reporting they feel burnt out at work.

Jane Mackarell, Microsoft’s modern work lead, said the higher Australian figure could be due to longer lockdowns and an inability to distinguish between work and home.

The “productivity paranoia” illustrates that leaders feel work is not getting done and want people back in the office.

But the issue for companies was to ensure that people were doing the right work when they were out of the office, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction and fearing a loss of productivity, she said.

Employers had to realise that the experience of work post-Covid needed to change, with leaders developing a culture of trust rather than observation.

The paranoia about productivity was a signal to managers to change their approach or risk losing staff in a tight labour ­market.

Ms Mackarell said the disconnect between workers citing burnout and managers worried about productivity was “a bit of a train smash”.

“It’s a signal for leaders to say: we need to enable these people to focus on the right things and not just work all the time,” she said. “And not just say, they’re not being productive. That’s not going to solve the issue.

“It’s the role of leadership to look at surveys like this and say, right, what is this signalling to us? What do we need to do? Because the pressure will only get worse.”

Ms Mackarell said Microsoft had operated as a hybrid work company well before the Covid lockdowns but it had nonetheless witnessed changes in the way people worked at home in recent years – both in the way they used technology and how they approached work psychologically.

“Technology has meant that they can do things differently,” she said.

“If you’ve got a really decent computer, and you can connect from anywhere … you can say, I’m actually going to take this call walking in the park, or I’m actually going to do this meeting where I am sharing some sort of document online, I’m going to do it in a cafe because I can. “There definitely is a psychological (change). “I’ve been at Microsoft for 20 years … I work with a lot of people who are in their early 20s, whose behaviour is completely different (now).”

But Ms Mackarell said one of the challenges was how to encourage staff to share their ideas and opinions at work.