With performance slipping, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called all corporate employees back to the office earlier this year. Butts in seats, five days a week.
But will RTO solve productivity? The honest answer: Who knows?
Productivity is a seemingly simple concept that proves notoriously slippery in practice. What does it mean to be productive, anyway? Is it a function of hours logged? Emails sent? Sales made? Are customers satisfied? Every boss seems to have their own definition.
No wonder "productivity anxiety" is reaching epic proportions, with eight out of 10 workers worried they aren't doing enough.
That uncertainty is coupled with a "business performance erosion crisis" as companies everywhere see productivity plateau.
The real problem: We're measuring productivity the wrong way. Actually getting a handle on it requires doing something as obvious as it is elusive: finding a way to truly connect people with business outcomes.
Here's why productivity is so hard to pin down — and how companies can begin to measure it in a more meaningful way.
For business experts and corporate leaders, productivity has long been an obsession. Back in the late 1700s, economist Adam Smith distinguished between productive and unproductive labor. The early 20th century saw the rise of efficiency experts who claimed to help companies get the most out of their........