The Productivity Paradox: Disrupting The Hybrid Workforce

A lot has happened since we talked about the fallacy of the long tail over a year ago. In case you missed my last post — I’m now at HP leading WW Digital Services.

As most people know, starting a new gig is both exciting and challenging, especially when the onboarding process is remote. Going from B2B SaaS e-commerce startup, fabric, to overseeing a fresh division at the pioneer of Silicon Valley involved a jump from the retail sector to the employee experience industry — a fairly complex transition. 

I've been navigating the corporate and start up world for over 20 years, with stints at Amazon, eBay, Staples, and even Alphabet. That's given me a unique perspective on the employee experience, from all different angles.

We have all noticed how tectonic shifts in workplace dynamics, coupled with the rise of hybrid and remote work environments, have resulted in an explosion of peripheral devices, operating systems, applications, networks, and cloud environments. With some enterprise workforces that span tens, even hundreds of thousands of employees, trying to manage the overall employee experience across an organization — let alone optimize it — is a non-trivial task.

So, how are companies keeping tech-enabled employees happy and engaged in this rapidly evolving world of work? 

The simple answer is — they aren’t really.

Productivity Is Fractured and Employees Aren’t Thrilled

For most workers, the last few years have felt like a never-ending series of obstacles to overcome. 

The shock of WFH

The sudden shift to remote work in 2020 brought unexpected challenges as employees entered a digital work environment. At the same time when bedrooms turned into offices, standing desks were built, and one too many headsets were bought, new technology hurdles emerged. From daily apologies for virtual meeting faux pas, weekly IT issues, and tech fatigue, the need for a seamless digital experience grew. 

Complex transitions and onboarding

Starting new jobs has also been tough. As a Mac user for the past decade, switching from Mac to PC — especially when going from iOS to 365 — was no small feat. Today’s employees also require position-specific tools and must manage a complex web of new technologies and procedures. 

In addition to a new stack of documentation and user guides, there’s a flurry of user accounts and access controls to set up, as well as the installation, configuration, and integration of numerous business-critical technologies. The processes are stressful, all of which can overwhelm new hires as they start developing relationships with geographically dispersed team members.   

Moreover, employees are also suffering from technology issues. In fact, 66% of employees report dealing with moderate to high digital friction. Meanwhile, nearly half of the workforce has to operate at least 11+ applications just to do their work.

The complexity of this growing digital ecosystem leaves employees navigating a broken path to productivity, resulting in lost work time. Organizations must grapple with delivering an effective digital experience to employees.

Adding even more complexity

Fast forward to today: employees are adjusted to this new way of working, routines are in place, habits are formed, and platforms like Zoom, Slack, and Teams are second nature. 

Then, companies suddenly threw yet another curveball — calling for employees to “return to office” (RTO) or risk losing their jobs. 

RTO: Boon or Bane for Productivity?

Zoom — the superhero that helped millions of employees work from home — called its employees within a 50-mile radius of HQ back into the office two days a week. Who knew the virtual creators yearned for an actual water cooler? CEO Eric Yuan claims that RTO empowers Zoom to develop the best-in-class products by experiencing their customers’ pain points first-hand. 

Salesforce went as far as offering a $10 charitable donation per day for 10 days for every employee who came into the office, while its CEO stated he doesn’t work well in the office. 

IBM told its managers to return to the office or leave the company, while Amazon amped up the pressure, greenlighting managers to take necessary actions on those not meeting the RTO policy.

Have these changes resulted in a boom in innovation and engagement? Not necessarily.

If anything, employees are experiencing more productivity obstacles in the office. Meta employees, for instance, are sitting on the floor during meetings, lacking sufficient desks and chairs. Citing “real estate efficiency,” Google’s cloud unit has asked its employees to share desks, while a poll by CNBC found that 65% of people have no interest in doing so. 

To many RTO workers, being in the office and at home are essentially the same — except for the commute — coming in just to be on Zoom.

An unsurprising response from employees

Employees have risked promotions and their jobs to oppose inflexible working arrangements with protests, walkouts, and unionization discussions. Companies set on bringing employees back into the office run the risk of culling their top talent to companies that offer more flexibility. 

Unlike many companies mandating a return to office, HP has settled on a relaxed view of hybrid work. Hybrid aims to strike a balance between flexibility and in-person collaboration. By leading the way to the future of work, HP, an 80-year-old company, remains progressive.

For some companies, remote work has become a permanent part of their culture. Shopify remains a remote-first company. Meanwhile, Airbnb established its Live and Work Anywhere policy. As a result, Airbnb’s attrition rate is at an all-time low and falling, with many people wanting to work there.

Overemployment: A red herring?

Overemployed is a relatively new phrase that describes remote workers who work multiple full-time jobs in secret. The privacy of remote work has provided job jugglers with a lucrative hustle—one of whom made $820,000 annually by working for Meta, Tinder, and IBM at the same time. 

It's understandable that CEOs insist on employees returning to the office to build trust. However, overemployment is still a niche phenomenon, as white-collar overemployees constitute less than 1% of an organization’s staff. 

There is now a community of overemployees doing the jobs of multiple people. If you think about it, being “overemployed” is the very definition of increasing productivity (when more output is produced with the same amount of inputs or when the same amount of output is produced with less inputs).

Shattering the Productivity Paradox

The ongoing debate about in-office versus remote boils down to employee productivity — organizations want certainty that employees are delivering output. Today’s work environment is especially challenging, with employees working from more places, across more devices than ever before.

“The average enterprise has over 1,000 different software tools and multiple devices. Productivity is lost chasing down everything from ‘Where was that file’ to ‘How do I file a vacation request.’” - Brian Elliott, Co-founder of Future Forum and former Slack Vice President 

As a result of these digital obstacles, only 32% of the U.S. workforce is actively engaged. Moreover, the sheer number of technology issues to resolve has stretched IT teams beyond their limit. 

How can organizations and employees better navigate this new world of work?

Delivering Exceptional Employee Experiences

“Focus on time — not place.” - Brian Elliott

Elliott’s study of 10,000 global office workers found that while allowing location flexibility provides a slight increase in productivity, it's more effective — by a factor of five — to allocate dedicated focus time and invest in digital tools and training.

The direct relationship between employee happiness and employer investment demands a paradigm shift in enterprise technology. The key is empowering employees to operate at their peak productivity by enabling CIOs to intelligently anticipate and resolve digital friction. 

Today’s employee experience platforms are focused on personal computing, but simply gathering telemetry from PCs to proactively fix problems only addresses a small portion of the overall issue; CIOs must become architects of seamless digital experiences and empower individuals to reach their full potential. 

Recognizing this crucial connection, my team and I are dedicated to providing exceptional employee experiences through our next-generation, modular workforce platform that addresses all dimensions of the workforce.

What my team is developing here at HP transcends the limitations of existing employee experience solutions. Our innovation serves as a connective infrastructure for the entire span of devices that employees use — not just PCs — to create a seamless employee experience. It goes further, capturing employee sentiment and empowering employers to actively cultivate positive interactions across every touchpoint.

Stay tuned for our next announcement. As we strive to reinvent the working world.