Before you get too excited, that doesn't mean we are off hiking, fishing, swimming, gardening, playing with the kids, blogging, surfing the web or reading or whatever else we enjoy the other 4 days of the week. We are averaging 45 hours a week "at our desks" but we only get about 3 days of work done.
I dare say there may be workplaces that would find three days of productive work a vast improvement and others that would consider that intolerable. Microsoft didn't provide a standard deviation for the results...just the average. Why is this important you ask?
Assume there were two respondents and one of them got in 1 day of work and the other 5 days of work. The average is 3 days of work. Without an idea of the variance we can't say what that average means exactly. Most office workers have a good idea intuitively what it means though.
We waste a lot of time at work.
Microsoft Survey Finds Workers Average Only Three Productive Days per Week
In summary the respondents said they get about 3 productive days of work out of a five day work week, meetings are a big time waster, Email is overwhelming, software directly effects their productivity (or lack thereof), they don't feel like they have a good balance between work and family life and don't have tools they need to plan for more efficient use of their time or improve their productivity.
Nothing surprising about the results. It is interesting how we refuse to acknowledge our lagging productivity. From the results it would be logical, if you were a perfectly productive person, to show up for work for 3 days...nobody I know is recommending that.
So what do we do?
Stick our heads in the sand, ignore things we could do to increase productivity, and continue with the myth that face time is all that counts - "If you are at your desk you are being a good worker bee."
A recent article in Line56.com written by Demir Barlas points out,
"Microsoft can doubtlessly provide the scheduling, collaboration, productivity, and applications tools needed to make workers more productive. The question is whether what Frederick Taylor noted as "soldiering" -- workers' deliberate attempts to be less productive -- is something that can be addressed merely by better tools.
Taylor's Scientific Management establishes that soldiering is the result of several factors -- e.g., the facts that most salaries are not linked to productivity, companies do not always provide the right incentive schemes, and workflows are often poorly laid out. As a result, Taylor said of the common worker, "This man deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can."
It's depressing to think anyone would be so burned out or cynical about their job that they would deliberately plan to do as little as possible. Frederick Taylor was studying the effects of automation on steel mill workers in the late 1800's, I'm not so sure we could correlate his studies with someone working at say...Microsoft at a desk job.
Not to say there aren't some burned out cynical office workers that may do pretty much what Fredrick Taylor supposed. I would propose hopefully that they are the minority and the majority of us would like to be as productive as possible.
In any case there are definitely areas where we could make drastic improvements in our efficiency (read - happier workers, more productivity, higher profits, all around win win) given the results of the Microsoft survey.
So how could we get more work from ourselves at work?
Microsoft would like to sell us software. That might help but there are deeper less easy to solve issues than getting everyone the latest copy of Microsoft Office.
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Two things that we could devote time to understanding and solving that would increase our productivity significantly are "presenteeism" and "low level office noise".
The first "presenteeism" is a complex phenomena that can only be addressed by integrated solutions. The second, "low level office noise" is not complex, but methods of addressing it are expensive and not easily implemented.
Neither are solveable by software upgrades.
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Productivity, Presenteeism and Low Level Noise
Assume you are an office worker of some sort.
Surely being present at work must be a sign of a productive worker.
Turns out that may not be the case. In fact being present in an office while you are sick or for some other reason disengaged from your assigned work describes a condition, with a relatively newly coined name, known as "presenteeism".
There was a time when workers were given rewards for most days at work with out taking a sick day. Someone figured out having sick people at work spreading germs and viruses to other people wasn't the best thing for productivity. We don't see those rewards for most days at work without taking a sick day anymore.
Researchers have found that productivity losses due to "presenteeism" are caused by more than the obvious cases where someone who is physically ill (e.g. someone with an allergy, migraine, hacking cough, the flu) shows up to work and is unable to perform at their peak or even at an acceptable level. Companies are beginning to focus on the lost productivity (read profits) due to "presenteeism" defined as "at work, but not optimally producing."
Some of these causes of productivity loss besides physical illness could be emotional problems, family issues, aging parent care, childcare, worker/management distrust, worker/worker distrust, overwork, workplace distractions ranging from heat/light/air quality, poorly written or targeted Email, insufficient or inappropriate use of a person's talents, unclear job assignments, lack of training, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.
In other words, some of the things the Microsoft survey touched on, expanded to include some deeper issues, not addressable by a software upgrade.
I'm all for good software tools don't get me wrong.
I think we might work toward solutions by considering two points -
(a) It's not a wise choice to equate a person being present as a mark of a good (productive, engaged, valuable) worker. That seems so obvious that it's silly to me, but it's still in vogue. Yes I can be at my desk and read the paper, surf the web, eat breakfast, talk to people about whatever, complain, or I could be at my desk and doing productive work. And the survey says, for about 3 days out of five the latter is true.
(b) We need to make our work spaces into places that are more conducive to productive work. I'm not sure about most people but if I have to work on something intellectually challenging I need uninterrupted space to begin concentrating, get ready to do the work and then do the work. There are studies that show for some types of work, for example programming, the spool up time to get ready to work is significant. For that type of work the wrong office environment can not just degrade productivity, it can make it close to zero, if there is not enough uninterrupted time to spool up, get ready to work and then actually start to work.
This lack of productivity due to office noise and interruptions, isn't limited to computer programming; any intellectual pursuit qualifies, where you have to begin thinking (concentrating on the task), lay things out (your papers, your tools, books, computer programs, references, your thoughts) to get started, before you can even begin to produce. Assume that takes you a half hour to get ready to do a task, if you are interrupted every 15 minutes productive work just ain't gonna happen.
What's my point? We need quiet or at least non-distracting work spaces to accomplish certain types of intellectually challenging tasks. Part of the day could be spent in the marketplace atmosphere of the office with noise/phones/email, but if you need a person to perform certain types of intellectual work you will need to provide them the proper tools (one of which is a space to work conducive to the type of work they are assigned).
Before you decide that some low level noise can't hurt it is instructive to read
Cornell University professor of design and environmental analysis ,Gary Evans, study on the impact on low-level noise on office workers stress levels, willingness to tackle, and ability to solve, complex problems.
Low level office noise was shown to be significantly detrimental to productivity. "Interestingly, however, the workers themselves did not report higher levels of stress in the noisy office. "But just because people fail to report that environmental conditions are negative, we can't assume that there are no adverse impacts,"
A few links on these topics -
The CEO Refresher - Presenteeism
Workindex.com article - The Dangers of Presenteeism
Stressbusting.co.uk article - Presenteeism.
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Postscript - I have to put in a caveat here.
I'm not one to propose that anyone should be a drone with their head down working working working 8 or 10 hours a day. What I am proposing is exploring ways to increase our enjoyment and satisfaction with work and thereby becoming more productive. The end result is we can spend more time having fun at work as well as having fun, and taking care of important things away from work. My basic premise is that no one enjoys being unproductive. Okay almost no one. I used to dream about being a bum but that's another story ;-)
