Everybody has unproductive days at work sometimes – management focus, natural peaks and troughs in work rate and work flow, health, outside commitments and many other factors contribute – but it is in every organisations’ interest to maximise productivity. Absenteeism can be managed effectively by ensuring that all staff get a back-to-work interview when they return to the business. So how do we manage and reduce presenteeism: employees attending work when they are sick, or even just staying around beyond the time needed for effective performance?
There’s some good evidence that the ideal model in terms of productivity is for employees to work as hard as possible for an average or shorter working week, rather than to work longer hours at a lower intensity. This also looks like a good route to a fair and health-enhancing Work/Life Balance. But the UK for example has some of the longest working hours in Western Europe, with some of the lowest productivity results: good neither for organisational finances nor for employees’ lives.
The HR approach to increasing work intensity and productivity is obvious. Recruit the right people based on competence and potential, invest in their development, and ensure that their managers use all the proven tools to maximise their effectiveness and empowerment: especially coaching and performance management.
It’s also worth considering alternative ways of working too, all of which can increase productivity while reducing unnecessary attendance.
• Flexitime (flextime in the USA): core hours are, for example, 10.00am to 3.00pm in the working week, with earlier start and finish times, between 7.00am and 7.00pm say, flexibly decided by the worker and/or agreed with their manager or team, so that the total number of hours per week, month or year meets the organisation’s policy. (Pros: more employee choice, better match of availability to workload, environmental benefits as workers are not all commuting at the same time. Cons: needs attentive management and systems, continuous dialogue between staff and managers, and promotion of the system to full-time workers and other stakeholders.)
• Staggered shifts: pre-agreed start and finishing times varying between team members, with a core hour overlap similar to flexitime. (Pros and Cons also similar to flexitime.)
• Compressed working week: say, four 10-hour days rather than five eight-hour days per week. (Pros: can suit people able to concentrate for longer, gives employees bigger blocks of time off. Cons: can leave teams short staffed at times, can impact negatively on productivity for some workers.)
• Part-time: 16 hours per week or less in the UK. Experience shows that part-time workers are often more motivated than full-time workers to keep their productivity up and their hours down to the contracted amount. (Pros: can attract and retain high quality employees who cannot or do not want to undertake full-time work. Cons: full-time workers need monitoring and encouragement to treat part-timers as equals.)
• Job-share: two or more part-time workers sharing a single role. (Pros and cons similar to part-time.)
• Hot-desking: rather than set individual work stations or desks, employees can work anywhere in a shared work space, with their materials, equipment and belongings cleared away and kept in lockers when they are not working. (Pros: forces employees to plan and organise better, works especially well with staff not based in one workplace all the time, reduces the physical space necessary for a team to work. Cons: hated by many workers for being too unsettling, can be seen as a way to cut costs rather than increase productivity.)
• Home-based working, telecommuting or ‘homeshoring’: employees are based in their own home office, communicating via the web and telephone to colleagues and stakeholders. (Pros: physical space and cost is saved at the main workplace, employees reduce ‘dead’ commuting to almost nothing, staff get to wear and eat what they like. Cons: not available to all roles, managers need to trust, brief and monitor their employees, reduces face-to-face communication, employment contracts need to be more complex and more explicit.)
So… ways to help your people get more done while spending less time working.
No comments:
Post a Comment