{"id":11111,"date":"2020-11-26T04:33:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T09:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/netsurit.com\/en-us\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2025-06-20T09:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T13:38:14","slug":"why-the-work-from-home-productivity-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/netsurit.com\/en-us\/why-the-work-from-home-productivity-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the work from home productivity boom?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WFH\nhas been a remarkable success largely because people were allowed to manage\nthemselves.<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Terry\nWhite<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many businesses learned during the COVID-19 crisis \u2013 when we were\nscrambling to allow our people to remain productive and connect with customers\ndigitally \u2013 that we could do things much faster and with a lot less red-tape\nthan we thought. We introduced work from home (WFH) in record time and digitised\nproducts at an unprecedented rate. The crisis showed us that people can work\nharder and that things can get done fast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are a few problems with the increased productivity and rapid\nimplementations that we saw during the crisis \u2013 we just can’t do it in a normal\nbusiness environment. When faced with an existential crisis, managers and\nbureaucrats had to step out of the way. Post-crisis, when things get back to\nnormal, managers and bureaucrats will, no doubt, flow seamlessly back into the\nsystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many companies have reviewed their actions during the crisis and resolved\nto keep the good and remove the bad. The \u201cgood\u201d involved faster\nimplementations, rapid innovations, reduced bureaucracy, more esprit de corps,\nand a clear focus on what needed to be done. The \u201cbad\u201d called for rapid and\noften patchy governance, inadequate paperwork and documentation, and people doing\nwork that was not in their job description or outside the hierarchy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People\u2019s productivity went up during the crisis, and that\u2019s good. Many\nexecutives ascribe this to the need to pull together and to people working from\nhome. But I think that it\u2019s more about the imposed empowerment that was forced into\nthe organisation. Without the usual chain of command, people were required to\nmake decisions on the company\u2019s behalf. They had a clear set of goals\n(survive!) and got on with it. They made changes and introduced innovations\nwithout going through the proposal-presentation-justification-approval-allocation\nof funds process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People worked hard, but that rate of work came at a cost. On average,\npeople worked an extra two to four hours a day. And because they were working\nfrom home, they had to deal with home-schooling, making meals, taking granny to\nthe shops, and calming down the partner who had just lost their job. It\u2019s\nunsustainable. No wonder 84% of South Africans say they want to get back to the\noffice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s come back to the \u201cnormal business environment\u201d I mentioned\nearlier. The vast majority of organisations have a clear hierarchy,\nwell-documented policies and processes, clean-cut delegation of authority, and\non average, one manager per ten workers. None of that was manifest during the\nCOVID-19 crisis. And yet productivity shot through the roof, decisions were\ntaken quickly, and ideas were implemented with astonishing speed. So perhaps\nit\u2019s not about working from home. Perhaps it\u2019s about removing the managers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many examples of organisations that work in \u201cabnormal\u201d ways: <\/p>\n\n\n\n