What is Productivity Paranoia and how to deal with it? Here are 5 tips for managers working in hybrid or remote teams

The COVID-19 induced lockdown is over, but teams across the world in several companies are still working in hybrid or work-from-home (WFH) mode. In such a situation, there are some managers or even chief operating officers or human resource professionals who are getting overly stressed about the output of the company’s employees. This phenomenon is called ‘Productivity Paranoia’.

This belief is often unjustified when the hybrid and remote teams are, in fact, working properly and even more than they do from the office.

If you are a team leader or manager and suffer from this phenomenon, here are some ways to tackle Productivity Paranoia.

Discuss best practices and processes:

Involve the team members in planning processes at work. Discuss the problems they may be facing in hybrid or remote work, and allow them to work around it. This way, they know you have their back and they will be able to work with more focus.

Be transparent:

If you are into too much surveillance and micromanagement, the employees, too, need to know what you are doing at a given point of time. Be transparent and work together.

Reduce Productivity Theatre:

Productivity Theatre is the result of micromanagement and Productivity Paranoia at the hands of the supervisor. Frustrated team members would want to appear busy and do less fruitful work. It is your responsibility to win their faith and engage them to do productive work.

Check the Tools needed:

If the team is remote or hybrid, it needs the perfect tools and support from the company to perform well, like the technology and physical stuff like a working laptop. Check with the team regularly to see if the tools are working.

Halt the Zoom meetings:

Enough of Zoom and Google Meet in the lockdown. Go slow and put a stop to time-consuming online meetings daily, and let the team focus on work. Communicate through WhatsApp or Slack.

FAQs

Q1:Describe Productivity Paranoia.
Microsoft has described Productivity Paranoia as a phenomenon in which “leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, number of meetings and other activity metrics have increased.”

Q2:What is Productivity Theatre?
Productivity Theatre is another term for an employee’s desire to appear more busy than they actually are. This behaviour is a result of Productivity Paranoia.