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Despite all we’ve learned over the past two years about how and where employees prefer to work, there still a lot of uncertainty about how to build workplaces that are truly productive, effective, and efficient.
To counter this, Asana (the popular project management platform) surveyed more than ten thousand global employees about how they are currently spending their time at work, what they feel would help them to be more productive, and what they need from their managers to be at their best.
Asana compiled the survey results into the 2022 Anatomy of Global Work Index, which identifies several strategies that companies can use to optimize their operations. We rounded up three action items to apply at your company.
1. Make Effective Use of People’s Time
Employees and managers alike have always worked to find a balance between the time they spend on strategy and the time they spend on focused, skilled work. But over the past two years, managers have increasingly lost that balance: they now spend more than 60 percent of their time on “work about work,” according to the Asana report.
One culprit in particular stood out as an ineffective use of time: meetings. Nearly 25 percent of surveyed workers said they see a direct connection between missed deadlines and an excess of meetings.
2. Limit Notifications
According to the Asana report, employers utilize a “multitude” of different apps to facilitate workplace communication, collaboration, and productivity. Unfortunately, this means that employees often simultaneously receive notifications and updates from Slack, Microsoft Teams, Monday.com, or whatever other apps they’re logged into. They switch their attention from one app to another and lose focus as a result.
Fortunately, the report identified strategies for reducing notifications:
- 48 percent of workers say that efficient meetings would be helpful in reducing the number of notifications they receive
- 45 percent of respondents said that notifications could be limited by introducing more clarity around everyone’s responsibilities
3. Advocate for Mental Health
It should come as no surprise that employees across the world have been struggling with their mental health during the pandemic. But employers might not realize how those issues have been compounding: the analysis found that 42 percent of employees experience burnout and imposter syndrome at the same time.
Sadly, many employees seem to believe that this is par for the course in corporate culture. Forty percent of respondents said that burnout is only to be expected and an inevitable consequence of success.
Managers must do more to support their employees, Asana concluded, whether by providing mental health resources or modeling a healthy work/life balance.
