No one’s experience of 2020 has been quite the same, but many companies, especially those relying on remote work and knowledge work, are seeing some decreased remote employee productivity even from high achieving workers. There are practical concerns that create these issues, such as a lack of available childcare in a dual income family with children, and emotional concerns, such as the fears of what the COVID-19 pandemic was going to look like. Others who haven’t worked remotely or who fear an impending furlough or layoff may have productivity issues as well. Read about the additional changes in productivity after the remote work increase.
As a leader on your team, you should take a holistic approach when you notice signs of low productivity. Simply asking or telling your team to work harder may not deliver the results you need right now. While a public health crisis can amplify some of these concerns, others may surface periodically in any workplace. Apply these strategies to address and improve productivity while keeping your team motivated.
Factors Impacting Remote Employee Productivity Levels
In any work environment, at least three elements influence a worker: their outside life, the work itself, and the work culture. While many argue that work and work culture intertwine too closely to separate, considering them individually can help you better understand what your team needs.
Outside Life
These concerns have posed some of the biggest challenges over the past 10 months: illnesses, family worries, increased isolation, and childcare changes. Many professionals lose productivity when dealing with health or family issues. Since these challenges often resolve over time, offering team members flexibility during these periods can be valuable—they usually return to their previous productivity levels once their situations improve.
Work Issues
In 2020, many companies faced more complicated, precarious, or frustrating work. Supply chain issues, inconsistent demand, and new safety regulations affected how people felt about their work and how effective they could be. Teams need to evaluate these challenges just like any other problem: does the professional control the issue, or does something external cause the low productivity? Answering this question helps you decide how to respond.
Work Culture
There are many elements of work culture, and they also weave into actual work issues as well, but some could be things like the shift from in-person office work to remote work or to a new schedule, new ways of communicating with one’s team, frustrating management or coworkers, methods of management that require a lot of administrative tasks outside the work itself, and more.
Do an Output Analysis: What is Needed Now?
When your team experiences low productivity, the first thing to consider is what the impact of that low productivity may be. For a high-achieving team, there may be no actual consequences to moving at a slightly slower pace, especially if clients or other stakeholders are still happy with the results and deliverables. Letting your team know that the lower output is noted can allow you to caveat what might actually be a problem, such as continued low output during a crucial busy time, or persistent low output over a certain amount of time.
Because many of the factors impacting low productivity now should not continue forever, this output analysis allows you the freedom to see if some of the issues go away on their own without demoralizing team members who are in a rough patch but will reemerge. This is what we mean by lower productivity not being the end of the world: focus on the actual impacts created, rather than getting anxious about the productivity lag itself.
However, when you determine that there are material consequences to the low output, you can still address it in a variety of ways.
Address Remote Work Challenges
When team members are struggling under remote work conditions, it’s worthwhile to find customized solutions if the team believes it will change output and productivity. For instance, if one or two members of the team can safely work indoors on-site instead of remotely in order to gain their former productivity, you may want to make that exception. You’ll have to analyze on a case-by-case basis, but if your team has hunches about what is causing their work-from-home lag, consider making changes in response.
Engage Team in Self-Analysis
Beyond work from home, other factors may be impacting the productivity concerns you’re seeing. Spend some time either as a group or in one-on-one meetings (depending on the source of the low productivity) and talk through what has changed in the three arenas above that could impact productivity. The goal is to spend some time thinking about what changed to reduce their productivity in the first place and to ideate with you about what could help. This takes away some of the sting of a low output discussion by recognizing that factors other than personal motivation affect productivity, and modifying those inputs can affect the outputs.
Set Achievable Goals With Team Members
When your team finishes their self-analysis, ask them to come up with some of their own benchmarks for ramping back up in productivity. You can weigh in on the timeline based on the needs you know your team has, but having your team show some buy-in to the changes will have a positive result. These goals should be SMART goals, so that you have something to circle back to in the future and to evaluate.
Set Times For New Conversations If Now Isn’t The Time For a Ramp-Up
In the case of health concerns, childcare issues, or other major productivity changes that cannot be addressed immediately, focus on setting a time for a future conversation to discuss what, if any, new options have emerged. Because trying to solve low productivity in the midst of a personal crisis tends to be ineffective, this commitment to a future conversation holds you both accountable but avoids demoralizing a team member for things they cannot currently change. Not everyone’s circumstances fall into this category, but it’s an important option to keep handy.
Read our additional post on remote employee productivity: “Remote Work Productivity Tips: 7 Changes to Improve Efficiency”
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