The problem with productivity

The productivity paradox  

Every leader is asking their teams to do more with less.  But sustained productivity isn’t about just pushing people harder to do more work.  It’s about helping the right people focus on the work that truly moves the needle (and stop doing the work that doesn’t). Is this possible?  Yes, but only with the right structure and systems to support it. 

Productivity drives HR operational policies, yet few organizations know how to effectively support, track, and measure it to drive their strategy forward. Encouraging productivity is an important element of managing people, yet this is a difficult and ambiguous metric for many people leaders and their direct reports. What happens more often is that your people feel obligated to demonstrate theatrical markers of being busy versus making a real impact with their tasks. 

Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index data reveals the gap on actionable change: 53% of leaders say productivity must increase, but 80% of the global workforce —both employees and leaders —say they’re lacking enough time or energy to do their work.  

Being productive is not about just doing the maximum amount of work possible – it’s about doing the work you’re meant to do, work that tangibly impacts your organization’s goals. When organizations can align on their priorities, workflows, and measures, alongside the right technologies, they can find their own secret sauce to productivity within each of their teams. But this workforce engagement challenge is not going to be solved as a broad mandate. It needs to be built into the backbone of how your organization is structured.  

Defining role responsibilities: The org chart is dead. 

Too many levels and sometimes too many people within an organization adds friction, slows down work, and decreases productivity. As organizations grow and evolve, multiple layers can develop as operations become more complex and different teams require new spans of control.  

Is the traditional view of the org charts coming to an end? Microsoft suggests replacing the organizational chart with a “work chart,” formed around goals instead of functions. Deloitte talks about rethinking the workforce ecosystem with a skills-based approach that focuses on tasks that need to be done. Restructuring how your operations run to focus on making the most impact requires taking a deeper look into how work gets done, including layers of approval, stakeholder feedback, and how many people are involved.  

Too many layers within an organization leads to breakdowns in communication, efficiency, agility, and the ability to execute. When employees are consistently given tasks without clear expectations of how their work contributes to the greater team, it can build a sense of dissatisfaction and arbitrariness.  

Defining role responsibility can help leaders create more accountability within teams to cut down on the layers. This may include reducing redundant roles and being clear on which roles have ownership over specific decisions to avoid excessive management. Encourage your people leaders to delegate responsibility and help ensure that each job role is conducted by the right person with the expertise to make better decisions, complete with proper governance checks.  

Break down the silos – or get stuck  

Siloed teams and data kill agility. Fragmented systems and data can’t support modern AI-powered operations. When functions operate independently, it can reduce operational efficiency, decrease the customer and employee experience, and hamper your business’s opportunities for growth.  

This isn’t to say every function should give input on more decisions (and that could prove counterproductive in many cases). Rationalizing your multiple siloed data sources and systems across your operations is your largest opportunity for increasing efficiency and productivity.  

Unifying siloed data is also essential for integrating AI into your processes, from workforce operations to human resources. Managing operations proactively is critical in the new world of work, but it’s no longer feasible when your essential workforce systems, such as scheduling, forecasting, time, payroll, and workforce engagement, don’t talk to each other.  

Productivity starts with ownership 

Triggering change starts with leaders, but it’s only effective if your people take to it. So, how can organizations trigger this change in their workforce? Accenture’s 2025 Life Trends found that half (49%) of employees hear ‘improving productivity’ messages more than statements around value or workforce development. On an individual level, this idea of improving general productivity is too abstract and not necessarily motivating.  

This starts with having autonomy. On a greater level, productivity and seeing impact can give workers a sense of control, satisfaction, and confidence in their abilities. Feeling this pride and dignity of work is an important element of a healthy workplace, but prioritizing worker independence can feel out of scope as more businesses are focused on navigating new business pressures in unstable economic times.  

From an operations perspective, the right tools can give your workforce more control over participating in schedules, swapping shifts, giving feedback, and accessing important information. This includes supplying the right integrated AI tools so people can more efficiently augment their workload with the support of AI agents who work alongside them.  

Technological advances can also help leaders operate with the confidence that their workforce is producing impactful work in these unpredictable times. Using data and analytics can help measure employee output, such as the rate of task execution or meeting performance goals that align with broader organizational goals. The right systems can also track the health of your workforce, such as retention rates. They can even flag workplace burnout symptoms and align them to a combination of factors like absenteeism, low engagement, and other intertwined datapoints in your people platform.  

Nurturing productivity requires a more holistic look at how your operations run. We each have the power to shape a future that harmonizes empathy with efficiency. Companies need the courage to embrace new technology that empowers their workers to own their work to build long-term success.