Stress, valueless busy work, impeding productivity

Unsustainable workloads, ineffective organisational structures and a lack of trust are depleting productivity, a new study reveals.

Mercer’s Workforce Solutions Leader, Pacific, Cynthia Cottrell, says productivity has a stigma attached to it.

Workplace stress, unsustainable workloads, valueless “busy work”, ineffective organisational structures and a lack of trust between workers and managers have been cited by C-suite executives and employees as key factors depleting productivity.

Mercer’s latest talent trends study found almost one-third of Australian senior executives expected productivity to lift over the next three years by more than 20 per cent due to artificial intelligence and one-quarter expected a 50 per cent jump. But an inability to leverage artificial intelligence was also regarded by senior executives as the biggest short-term threat to their business.

Forty-one per cent of workers reported feeling exhausted, saying the mental and emotional demands of their work were too high, that they felt overwhelmed by technology and their work-life balance had significantly deteriorated.

Asked what kept them from being productive, 42 per cent of employees said too many interruptions; 40 per cent said time spent on tasks that did not add value; 39 per cent said ineffective organisational structures, including silos and multiple reporting lines; 35 per cent said too high workloads and 30 per cent cited stress. Among executives, 32 per cent said stress was depleting productivity; 44 per cent cited too much “busy work”, 36 per cent said difficulty finding the right information; 32 per cent said stress and one-quarter nominated high workloads.

Leader for Mercer’s Workforce Solutions in the Pacific ­Cynthia Cottrell said productivity had a stigma attached to it. ­“Employees read it as ‘do more with less’ so their jobs get even more hours, less support, less back-up and all of those things add to the stress,” she said.

“What we really need to be doing is talking more about productivity, as turning you into a 1.5 times employee so you can ­actually do more in the same time. It comes back to establishing a two-way conversation between employees and employers.

“I think for Australia specifically, the productivity discussion will do itself a lot of good if it shifts away from doing more with less to doing work with less effort, and using that capacity to do other things. Still productive but maybe things that will really benefit the workforce too. Still deliver the output but potentially do that in a more sustainable way.”

Ms Cottrell highlighted the high level of workplace burnout.

There had been an initial spike during the Covid pandemic when “everyone got thrown into this fully virtual new way of work”.

“It made sense when we saw that spike,” she said.

“One thing that surprised me was to see that still we’re at 83 per cent of the workforce who are reporting burnout risk at this point of time. It’s not dissimilar to the spike we saw in 2021 and so what it’s saying is we really haven’t come down from that adrenalin-filled, can’t-blink-or-you’re-going-to-miss-something version.”

According to the survey’s ­global results, the rapid growth in generative AI capabilities has raised hopes for workforce productivity gains, with 40 per cent of executives predicting AI will deliver gains of more than 30 per cent. But 58 per cent believe technology is advancing faster than their firms can retrain workers, and less than half believe they can meet this year’s demand with their current talent model.