Work hours don’t matter, results do

What is critical today is not the number of hours an employee is tied to his or her screen or work desk but the kind of work they do.

Remote work wouldn’t have just happened without the pandemic. No one had imagined the obliteration of workplaces as we know it in terms of cubicles and conference rooms and the daily rigmarole. Will the future of work be in coffee shops, homes or even bustling suburban stations, or will it be back to the offices with traffic jams, 80-90 hour work weeks and office politics?

What began as an exigent adaptation has now ossified into the bedrock of modern business operations, demanding agility, trust, and a radical overhaul of how productivity is measured. Attendance logs, physical presence, and the illusion of industriousness now stand obsolete. In this new era, how does one gauge productivity without descending into Orwellian oversight or bureaucratic micromanagement?

For managers who derive comfort from omnipresence, this shift is disconcerting. The inability to loom over an employee’s shoulder has engendered a breed of digital surveillance tools that count keystrokes and log idle time, mistaking activity for efficacy. Leadership is no more Taylorism; it is about getting things done and delivering results.  It can no longer be whether the employees work long hours but what they are achieving. And that means reworking on performance metrics that eschews antiquated measurements in favour of outcomes that truly matter.

The central point around which the debate on long hours and back to office calls is the inability of the leadership to devise meaningful metrics that captures the work expected to be done by employees. The frenetic energy of the traditional office, mistaken for productivity, is unmasked in the work-from-anywhere era. What is critical today is not the number of hours an employee is tied to his or her screen or work desk but the kind of work they do. The latest Elon Musk salvo to Federal Government employees to justify their work context is a case in point regardless of the manner by which it is being done.

Project management platforms like Asana, ClickUp, and Zoho Projects have democratised task visibility, and ushered in accountability without having the supervisors breathing down the necks. A Bengaluru-based IT firm, wrestled with inefficiencies in remote operations, transitioned from random status meetings to a structured task-based assessment model. This led to a transparent, results-oriented ecosystem where performance spoke louder than mere presence. Productivity surged, random meetings dwindled, and employees thrived, unshackled from the tyranny of oppressing scrutiny.

Yet, measuring productivity is not merely about output; it is about optimising effort. Time, when wielded ineffectively, is a deceptive metric. An employee labouring over a task for ten hours may not necessarily be more effective than one who accomplishes the same feat in half the duration. There are AI-driven analytical tools such as Time Doctor and DeskTime that dissect workflow patterns and shed light on inefficiencies that hide beneath the surface. An e-commerce company in Gurugram deployed AI to analyse its workflow and was shocked to discover that many employees were haemorrhaging hours on emails at the expense of strategic initiatives. The antidote? Asynchronous communication channels that reallocated time from administrative drudgery to high-value tasks, exponentially amplifying efficiency.

The sheer volume is no indicator of excellence. A glut of hastily churned deliverables is as detrimental as inertia. In a remote paradigm, quality must be sacrosanct. For a writer, metrics that evaluate engagement is more apt than mere number of words. For a software developer, clarity and functionality of code is more important than verbose syntax. Again, AI can come to the rescue today – Grammarly refines grammar and prose, while GitHub Copilot expedites better code writing. Smart companies don’t just deploy such  tools as crutches but as accelerants of excellence to enable employees to overcome mediocrity.

Communication, the sinew binding remote teams, must be wielded with precision. A deluge of “Slack” messages and incessant “Teams” notifications do not signify collaboration; they are the harbingers of digital exhaustion. Effective communication is measured not in frequency but in clarity and impact. Beleaguered by constant digital chatter, Indian fintech enterprises have pioneered solutions like ‘No Meeting Tuesdays’ – a radical and effective step that has strengthened deep work and eliminated superfluous discussions. The lesson is clear: communication should be an enabler, not a hindrance.

It’s not about efficiency but adaptability is the keyword today for employees. The increasing footprint of AI is transforming the contours of work itself. Those who use AI to augment their work will outpace their peers who see it as adversary. A leading digital marketing firm embraced AI for content development and reduced turnaround time by over 42%, freeing up human brain for more serious work of ideation. Employees who refuse to adapt AI will eventually be redundant: a reality that reinforces the importance of adaptability as a key competence.

The best KPIs for performance evaluation, going by the new trends, are peer and customer feedback – they offer unfiltered opinion about an employee’s work impacting them. Anonymised surveys, 360 degree feedback system and customer testimonials offer a holistic insight that cannot be replicated by any AI or software based appraisals. Taj Hotels use customer feedback even for the chef as a metric.  Several major companies have championed such user-driven assessments as a way to reinforce the importance of collaborative and contributory approach to delivering collective value over individualistic performance.

The outdated belief that presence equates to performance is a relic of a bygone era. Murthy and Subrahmanyan should have realised that true brilliance resides not in optics but in tangible impact. Remote work and the ascendancy of AI demand a profound shift – from surveillance to trust, from monotony to innovation. Abandoning the crutch of direct oversight is not an act of weakness but a path to liberation.

WFA is here to stay: it is a structural shift. Business leaders reluctant to let go off archaic systems will face imminent irrelevance. No Gen-Z will want to work for L&T, given an option. To succeed today requires trust, independent thinking and measurable results. As Oscar Wilde astutely observed, "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy," it’s time to dismantle this cycle, and redefine productivity. Forego surveillance, an anachronism.

Productivity is not the art of being observed; it is the science of delivering impact. The choice is stark: relinquish the vestiges of an outdated work culture or embrace the metrics that genuinely drive progress. Those organisations bold enough to master this transition will not merely endure the remote revolution; they will shape it, becoming its defining architects.