SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
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SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
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Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#2The SBA is referring specifically to their own employees doing SBA work, not necessarily telework in general.
Interestingly, they attribute the additional productivity to the fact that their telework employees are simply working more hours:
> “It doesn’t matter to me where your eight-, 10-, 12-hour day is, but as long as we’re getting coverage from that perspective,” Rivera said.
> While some federal managers have expressed skepticism with telework productivity, Deputy CIO Luis Campudoni said employees are, if anything, putting in longer hours than they normally would working in the office.
> “From an eight-hour workday that you would normally experience in the office, now, without asking the workforce, certainly get 10-12 hours of work done on a daily basis. It’s because of that flexibility, people appreciate that,” Campudoni said.
I would also expect productivity to go up if everyone was working 25-50% more hours under the new system. I don't know if that's sustainable though. If these jobs are paid hourly and the extra hours aren't mandatory then the employees aren't necessarily getting a bad deal. However, if the extra hours are unpaid or the 12-hour days become mandatory, this could fall apart fast.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#3Does it matter though?
I mean that literally, does actual data matter? The data in support of telecommuting has been around for years if you want to find it, heck you even pay employees less in some circumstances as they can live in lower COL areas (plus cost savings in fewer offices/smaller offices/rental instead of ownership/etc).
But the reality is that a certain type of employee rises through the ranks: Those who have a strong aptitude towards interpersonal connection (i.e. extraverts). They're also a loud[er] group. They benefit more from in-person than telecommuting, and they also often make the decisions.
Do you really expect a group of decision makers, who gained power via their interpersonal skills, wanting to give up that skill advantage and potential turn their business into a meritocracy?
COVID was a rare blip, because it tipped the scales just enough to make their position untenable, but in five years I do not anticipate any broad change in landscape. Heck even before a lot of people had a chance to get vaccinated many businesses are RUSHING back into the office, why? The same inexplicable reason we're there to begin with.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#4I am more productive but my team as a whole is less productive. Highly individual tasks are great for this whole setup but anything requiring high degrees of coordination seems to have suffered.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#5The big thing they seem to have done is a good job scaling up.
But likely the primary reason they were able to scale up so rapidly was that in the midst of a pandemic, there were millions of workers looking for jobs and after the twin impacts of the Great Recession and the pandemic in less than a decade, a much larger cohort who were likely more predisposed towards the safety of a government job than pretty much anytime in the past half century.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#6Does it matter though? I mean that literally, does actual data matter? The data in support of telecommuting has been around for years if you want to find it, heck you even pay employees less in some circumstances as they can live in lower COL areas (plus cost savings in fewer offices/smaller offices/rental instead of ownership/etc). But the reality is that a certain type of employee rises through the ranks: Those who…
It was a world-wide pre/post test to be sure. I think that most companies will be better off to go back into the offices because the alternative is to carefully think through the work and write a lot of things down.
People would rather talk than write, on average.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#7Does it matter though? I mean that literally, does actual data matter? The data in support of telecommuting has been around for years if you want to find it, heck you even pay employees less in some circumstances as they can live in lower COL areas (plus cost savings in fewer offices/smaller offices/rental instead of ownership/etc). But the reality is that a certain type of employee rises through the ranks: Those who…
It was a world-wide pre/post test to be sure. I think that most companies will be better off to go back into the offices because the alternative is to carefully think through the work and write a lot of things down. People would rather talk than write, on average.
> It was a world-wide pre/post test to be sure. I think that most companies will be better off to go back into the offices because the alternative is to carefully think through the work and write a lot of things down.
Companies that do this will be at a distinct advantage over companies that rely on informal, ad-hoc, in-person conversations. There are many companies that have been started during the pandemic that are remote first and have the process to back it up. I don't think in-person companies can compete between lack of access to talent, undocumented communication, office politics, employee stress and fatigue due to commuting, living in a high cost of living area and the previously mentioned politics...
I'd also say a lot of management is actually unneeded, which also comes to light in remote first companies.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#8I am more productive but my team as a whole is less productive. Highly individual tasks are great for this whole setup but anything requiring high degrees of coordination seems to have suffered.
I think coordination was terrible in the beginning. But over time folks have worked out lots of things.
I've seen gradual, but sustained improvement in WFH skills.
For example, teleconferencing skills. People have learned to share their screens, then people gradually adapted to have an agenda on-screen to show and step through, people figured out how to send links and files during a meeting. Even silly stuff like how to contact someone who forgot about a meeting.
And some of it is more democratized. Regular folks are figuring out how to do peer-to-peer meetings, which were normally organized and driven by managers. This also goes for other tools like wiki, shared documents, teams, calendars, email, slack.
Another thing is a gradual spool up of WFH support. It took a while for people to figure out a webcam that works, or a microphone or headset. Or a chair, or a room setup, or just a rhythm.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#9I am _ridiculously_ more productive at home.
When I hear folks complain about the pains of working from home, what I often hear are their stories about how they were needlessly disruptive to their coworkers.
Having impromptu hallway meetings mean that your peers, and subordinates, must keep an ear open for such events should they risk being left out of important decision making processes.
Having watercooler conversations means that your office-mates must take effort to overcome their human desire for social communication in order to focus on their task at hand.
And so on.
Generally, I find having a team that works wholly remote means that we schedule communications clearly and are able to maintain the focus on our work before us.
Re: SBA executives ‘beyond doubt’ that teleworking employees are more productive
#10People around the world are different, companies are structured differently, work cultures vary. We should not try to "homogenize" everything. And as such, why use data from a global set to apply it to a local set?
If teleworking works for your company, great keep doing it! If it doesn't, don't do it. And lets not demonize when a company makes a decision that is right for them in their particular case.
For our company, we've made the decision to not allow teleworking, and it is only approved temporarily on a strict case by case basis. I think it has helped our work culture and productivity over the many years.