Did you Know?
“Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand firm trialed a four-day week. The results found that 78% of employees could more effectively balance their work and home life. This was compared to 54% before the experiment.”
Every person has unique energy levels, production cycles, and preferred methods and hours of working. Eight hours a day may be the optimum work schedule for some people. While for others, it may result in decreased productivity and higher stress.
Productivity is the basis of any organization’s competitive advantage. However, calculating output consists of more than just keeping track of an employee’s working hours. Employers and employees must strike the correct balance between worker productivity and hours spent.
Moreover, managers must understand the idea of employee productivity, identify the variables that impact it, and investigate the correlation between hours worked and productivity.
This blog explores the relationship between productivity vs. hours worked, offering advice on how to boost productivity at work without putting in more hours.
The Difference Between Productivity and Working Hours
Productivity is defined as the amount of significant, high-quality work completed in a given time. The number of hours worked is merely a measure of how much time an employee works.
Take an example. Emma and Jake both work ten-hour days at a software development company. Emma completes a major project, fixes several bugs, and assists her team with troubleshooting issues.
Jake, although present for the same number of hours, spends a significant amount of time on personal tasks and only manages to complete a few minor updates to the code.
While both Emma and Jake worked for ten hours, Emma’s productivity far exceeds Jake’s due to her higher output and more impactful contributions.
The Relationship between Hours Worked and Productivity
Although it’s easy to think that working long hours will enhance productivity, data indicates otherwise. Many corporate executives have been conditioned by the typical 40-hour workday to believe that more hours equate to higher production. This isn’t always the case, though.
Maintaining a balance of productive time is crucial to understanding the relationship between productivity and hours spent. Hence, the period when a team member is fully committed to their work and capable of completing tasks with effectiveness is all that matters.
Rule of 4 Productivity
“Recent studies and thought leadership in the realm of productivity suggest a fascinating insight: most people are only truly productive for about 3-4 hours in a day. This concept challenges traditional 8-hour workday norms and encourages us to rethink how we structure our workdays for maximum efficiency.”
The Effects of Longer Hours on Productivity
While working more hours may seem beneficial at first, studies reveal that there are numerous drawbacks to it also.
According to a Stanford University study, those who work more than 49 hours a week are less productive. They discovered that employees who work 70 hours accomplish the same amount of work as those who work 55 hours, and that this drop accelerates to the point where working any more would be futile.
The Effects of Shorter Hours on Productivity
Technology is largely responsible for the rise in worker productivity. It’s likely not necessary for most workers to put in as many hours as it did for earlier generations. Even though employees aren’t putting in a full 40 hours over those four days, many organizations are experimenting with the four-day workweek with encouraging results.
Businesses that used the four-day approach had reduced absenteeism and turnover rates. Workers who put in 32 hours a week instead of 40 have expressed happiness. These employees can control their stress, get more sleep and have time for exercise. Also, they get to spend more time with friends and family.
The Effects of Flexible Hours on Productivity
Offering flexible work arrangements to employees is a growing trend in workplace culture, giving them the freedom to decide when and where to complete their duties. 43% of workers with flexible hours said they were more productive, according to Gartner.
Hence, a portion of this can be ascribed to the fact that 30% of workers claimed that having less commuting time allowed them to work more efficiently.
Tips to Increase Productivity in Fewer Hours
There are various approaches to enhance productivity in your company that don’t involve increasing the number of hours including workforce analytics practices. Reducing overtime while increasing output can be achieved by giving staff members the freedom to concentrate.
Here are some tips to increase productivity through fewer hours:
Fun Fact
“Consider scaling down the tasks to a more manageable 1-2-3 Rule, where you focus on one big task, two medium tasks, and three small tasks. Prioritize tasks that are time-sensitive or have the most significant impact. It’s better to complete fewer tasks well than to do a poor job on a larger number.”
1. Provide adequate tools
Employees can meet deadlines and do jobs efficiently in less time when they have the necessary tools. Many solutions are available in the market with which your staff can show more creativity and productivity in less time. All hails to automation!
So, consider implementing an automated system in your workplace offering various features like staff management, time and attendance, reporting and scheduling. Empowered with the latest techniques and technologies, there would be increased teamwork and timely task completion.
2. End needless meetings
Unnecessarily long meetings are often boring and do not give expected results. Workers also show less interest in such meetings as these tend to lower their productivity and efficiency.
According to a survey by Salary.com, 50% of workers consider meetings the biggest waste of time at the workplace. Thus, banishing useless meetings is also an effective method to enhance output and employee satisfaction.
3. Turn down distractions
Whether your staff is on-site or remote, distractions are one of the biggest factors preventing your team members from being productive.
According to research, workers deal with disruptions for 2.5 hours on average daily. And to refocus, it takes them 23 minutes and 15 seconds on average.
Therefore, it is important for employers to provide a calm and peaceful work environment for the staff. Thus, resulting in optimal output and working conditions.
4. Monitor employee productivity
Businesses can measure yield in many ways. Some of these methods include identifying productivity gaps. Such gaps are caused by working extra shifts, excess workloads, insufficient training, or wrong tools.
Managers can identify circumstances to generate the most productive work environment and offer strategies to boost productivity by actively monitoring staff activity.
5. Encourage working remotely
After the pandemic, employees want independence and flexibility in their working conditions. It’s important to be concerned and realize that if you grant your staff some extra autonomy, they won’t misuse it. Rather, they will prefer to work when they feel to be the most productive.
Because of this freedom, remote team members work 43% more hours weekly than their regular office peers—more than 40 hours weekly. Thus, working remotely can yield almost equal or even higher results than working on-site.
Enhance Employee Productivity with Smart Workforce
Every successful business wants to balance worker productivity and hours worked. Knowing what productivity means to your company, figuring out how hours worked affects productivity, and putting work-life balance plans into practice will help you maximize employee performance while prioritizing their health.
So, if you want to strike an ideal balance between well-being and productivity, utilize the comprehensive workforce analytics from Smart Workforce. Our staff monitoring system protects employee privacy while providing you with information about how, when, and where people are most productive. Hence, letting you strategically decide about tools to be used, policies to be implemented, and working hours implied.