The pandemic productivity boom is roughly the equivalent of the wheel. Things roll a lot smoother. It’s as obvious as the wheel. People have been screaming about the vast inefficiency and waste of the job/commute/stress cycle for decades.
Now, the obvious has proved itself beyond even the stupidest doubt. Pandemic productivity growth speaks for itself. Superficial/not-paying-attention observations, however, abound.
For example, according to The New York Times:
- Jobs down 4.4.%
- Productivity up 2.3%
The theory of “doing more with less” is also entirely misleading and dangerous. Taken to its extreme, “doing more with less” would lead to “do everything with nothing”. Historically, “doing more with less” has merely led to understaffing and overloading. Productivity rarely includes wastage, staff turnover, costs of hiring, etc.
Hours worked may or may not be truly productive, and certainly not indicative of anything much. Prior to the pandemic, extra hours often meant making up for being understaffed or other inefficiencies. The inefficiencies were caused by models which were under-resourced due entirely to the theory of “doing more with less”. Estimates of productivity were usually confined to simple sales figures, profit and loss (easily tweaked), and lengthy statements about one’s own brilliance.
Real productivity growth only appears with real efficiencies. The NYT is citing the usual measures of the last 40 years, not the hard-money measures. There’s a reason for that, and it’s entrenched in corporate culture, that famous contradiction in terms.
Over-management – The absolute basics
This society is horrendously over-managed at all levels. In business, it’s worse, almost as bad as politics. (In politics, anyone with a phone and a few practical connections can manage you.) The cost of management is extremely rarely if ever factored in to the rosy glow of never-ending “great numbers”.
These management costs are gigantic, and ever since the Great C Class Gold Rush of the 1980s, they’ve been getting far more expensive. Performance isn’t measured much at all, let alone productivity. It’s spin rather than substance. Sound familiar?
This is the culture that created the “normal” work environments of the pre-pandemic era. Over-management created an environment for itself. Generic management styles made it worse. People with no sector experience were supposed to “manage. Then the mindless “meeting culture” removed billions of hours of direct connections with the workspace.
This is productive? How? To make things much worse, the workplace became a maze of rituals not at all connected with actual work.
Perchance, again the obvious:
- Performance reviews: It takes you 6 months to find out someone’s not working up to speed, and you need a further month of processing to do anything about it? Like hell.
- KPIs: Pedant-level measures of calls taken, or similar trivia. You could get the same info from your own phone records; it’s dashboard level information and has been for decades. But no. Someone must use up X minutes/hours filling in KPIs. Also note no dollar value can possibly be directly linked to a phone call or other interaction with such meagre information.
- Phone queues: The last word in applied inefficiency for callers, and expensive. Some genius didn’t figure that roaming fees make waiting very costly, as well as time-wasting. Human operators don’t waste their own time, so they don’t waste yours.
This is “management”? Again, how? A crystal ball would be better and look better. The world survived just fine without any of this garbage. Now, the garbage is compulsory.
These, however, are nowhere near as destructive of productivity as office over-management at its absolute worst. Consider:
Stress levels: The cliché screaming supervisor, the Mylanta addict middle manager, and the arguably insane and variously visible upper management hardly creates a great work environment. They’re normal, part of the myth, but also part of the very ugly facts.
Unhealthy workplaces: Aka just about all of them, in some form. Why are so many people sick and over-stressed? Guess. Sick people can’t do well in work environments. America’s booming, predatory health sector is a testimony to how bad the workplace has become.
Cheapskate culture: The cycle of low wages vs high executive wages hardly needs explaining. It is no surprise to anyone that the new minimum wage just happens to be double the old minimum wage. Who delayed it? Management, pleading poor while generating all these “great numbers”, real and imaginary, for investors.
Pandemic productivity vs over-management
Compared to this smugly useless chaos, the much greater pandemic productivity is inevitable. “Fewer workers are making more stuff” is the most superficial observation I’ve seen so far.
Short answer – No, they’re not. They’re simply now able to do more without the over-management:
- They can manage their time much better working remotely. Things get done because they can be done, without the endless distractions.
- They add any number of hours to the working day by not having to commute.
- They save money. That’s a measure of productivity nobody’s made yet, but it would be worth tens of billions per year to the bottom line of every worker. (That also means that they have extra money to spend and invest in the economy, but hey; who cares about that?)
- The need for office spaces decreases exponentially. That saves more billions in business costs. (Sky blue, grass green…)
- Managers can manage things that actually need their attention. As distinct from every damn stupid, expensive, antique ritual some overpaid fool of a consultant remembers from their college days.
- Communications are irrefutably much more efficient. Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but people keeping out of people’s faces definitely helps. Relationships at a distance are a lot easier to manage.
- Functional spaces can be much better organized. Fewer people onsite means less space required, therefore more productivity and savings whether you like it or not.
- Capital, and often a lot of capital, is freed up from being tied to workplace costs. No-brainer? Yes.
Also note – I didn’t even have to mention automation to make any of these points. Call it a hint.
Summary in elegant Management Science Speak
Diddums precious want to make more nice refreshing, nutritious (insert patronizing buzzwords as required) snuffly-wuffly money for diddums?
This is how you do it. Have a nice pandemic and get forced into much higher levels of productivity and profitability despite your own monumental geological-era-long stupidity.
Now donate money to some sleazy geriatric political no-real-world moron who doesn’t get any of that, and all will be well. One day the wheel will, at last, be invented.
Clear? And to think – All that had to happen was millions of people dying to make such an obvious point. Smart guys.
