How do we know people are working if we can't 'watch them'? That's the remote work question, isn't it?
I know that we can easily measure employee output these days. We've been doing it with great vigour for more than 20 years - and even longer if you consider Total Quality Management started in the early 1920s. We're experts at it now.
But in China, there is great worry over productivity because of the coronavirus. I found the most hysterical quote in the front page of the business section of the Globe and Mail yesterday. Here's an excerpt:
"Some Chinese executives and managers, though, have taken a dim view of their ability to get things done with workers at home. In a country that prizes long hours at the office, companies are keeping close track of how much is getting done by employees far from the gaze of superiors who worry they can’t trust their underlings to be productive on their own.
With so many working remotely, ”there’s no way for us to supervise what people are doing. We don’t know if our employees are writing code or just playing with their cats,” said Cheng Zheng, founder of DDD Online, an augmented reality company. “It’s just the opposite of the traditional Chinese work style.”
The article reports that productivity levels are varying. Solitary coders are fine, but those positions requiring communications had low productivity while working remotely.
It makes me wonder how they had been working and how efficient they actually were. They couldn't have been using teleconferencing or videoconferencing to meet in groups prior to this. Or maybe they required employees to 'check in' with managers all the time to find out how things are going - judging on time spent rather than results.
And that seems to be what the article says. The Chinese are resistant to offsite work: the Globe reports that there have been studies that prove remote work is more productive than on site work. The crisis is showing that remote work is as productive as on site work - a surprise to the Chinese managers.
And what is this about playing with their cats. It turns out that there are more than 67 million pet cats in China and the cat owner population are generally millennials. So the worry is there: these millennial employees could be playing with their pets and making videos at home right now.
(Don't read the other articles about cats and dogs - makes me sadly aware of my bubblesome existence).
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