Worker Efficiency - The Futile Quest For 100%

I'm not going slow, I'm just doing that task really, really, really well. I promise.

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Alright, let's do a little mental picture painting. You're at your desk working away with enough tasks to keep you busy for another three hours. Problem is... you're 45 minutes into an 8 hour shift and have nothing exciting on the horizon. You open up a second tab, and a third, even a fourth (how daring of you!) on your computer and pull up your Facebook feed, the scores from last night's games, and start browsing for that shirt you saw at the mall the other day on the store's website. A few minutes pass and you hear your boss approaching in the hallway. Muscle memory kicks in and you flick your mouse to the tab running excel spreadsheets. They round the corner and it looks as if you've been working on that quarterly report the whole time. Sneaky you lives to browse another day!

Heck, you don't even need to be in an office! That few minutes you've been sent to recover stock from the warehouse is the perfect chance to drop a couple messages in the group chat. Have down time at the till and no customers around? Out comes snapchat. Waiting for a coworker to get something and you're stuck in purgatory holding a ladder? All good, let's see what's new on TikTok. Let's be honest, we're all guilty of doing something like this at least a couple times (some more than others, but your secret is safe with me). You don't want to risk being discovered by your supervisor and are leery of anyone else in sight for fear that they may report you; But man that dog video is so darn cute and I need to see how it ends! So yeah, it's worth the risk.

Now this sort of thing is obviously frowned upon in the workplace, and I don't think that's a very controversial take. I don't see many people busting their phones out in front of their supervisor to film the next great Instagram reel because that would just intuitively seem wrong. And yet we all do it at some point and to some degree. Is it the most efficient? No, and most of us are likely not getting paid to do it. But is it a great idea to crank the worker efficiency lever up to 11 for the sake of it? Increasingly, it seems that the answer companies are going with it yes, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

So what does worker efficiency actually look like? In what ways is the quest for 100% efficiency damaging to the workplace? And why is it better to maintain a slightly lower level of efficiency?

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Efficiency VS Laziness

First we need to cover off what the difference is between two different terms that are often used interchangeably in the workplace. But before I go further let me be perfectly clear:

This article is not me defending people who are actively not doing their job.

Again, these terms are used fairly interchangeably so it can be tough to narrow in on what I mean by this. If there is a person working a cash register with a line several shoppers deep and you decide to check your phone before helping the next person, that's not cool. If you're on a construction crew and you're the only person sitting in the truck listening to music while everyone else is working a shovel, that's not cool. If you opt to send in a report late because you were busy listening to a podcast and lost track of time... That's. Not. Cool.

And those are examples of Laziness. Of people actively not doing their jobs.

For the sake of ease, let's reframe these same situations and see if they change a little. If a person is working a cash register and the store has been empty for 10 minutes, can you call them lazy if they check their phone? If the person on the construction crew is listening to music with the rest of the team because they can't do anything else until a truck full of material arrives, are they being lazy? You submit a report late because you didn't have all the info until 30 minutes before it was due. Are you lazy?

No, you are not lazy.

That being said, are these examples of maximum 100% worker efficiency?

Also no. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Long story short, this is going to address the efficiency end of things, not the laziness end of things. Lower efficiency IS NOT Laziness.

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So you want people to work... less hard??

The idea of a workplace striving for anything less than maximum worker efficiency probably sounds a little foreign. You don't see it often and it's understandable that the climate in the workplace is one of "I'm paying you to be here and do stuff, so do stuff". But the quest for 100% efficiency is, quite simply, futile. Yes, if you're done your primary task at hand, you can stay busy by doing "Make Work Tasks" which usually amount to things like sweeping, organizing, checking emails, restocking, etc. But you can only do that for so long. I can only organize my desktop so much. There are only so many emails to chip through. I can only clean for so long before I'm cleaning stuff I've already cleaned.

On paper it makes sense. You want your employees to look engaged and not lazy (there's that interchangeability again), but is it really better for your company if the person has been sweeping the same spots for the last 20 minutes because it's slow. "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean" sounds wonderful until you see the poor guy with the broom disengaged with his existence as he stands there looking like the broom is draining his life force.

Am I advocating for people to work less hard? It's the wrong way to look at it. If there's something that you need to do with some degree of urgency, do it. But at the end of the day, you can only do these "Make Work Tasks" for so long before even those become exhausted. At a certain point, you've done everything that needs to be done.

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The Overload

As I have mentioned in the past, companies exist to make money and only to make money. That is literally their job. And in the eyes of the company, the best way to do this is to achieve 100% worker efficiency. A supervisor, boss, or CEO can delegate tasks all day long if they want, but they will not change the fact that people are not machines and are not 100% efficient.

I want you to go outside and sprint for 5 kilometers. Not run, sprint. Maximum efficiency. I'm going to assume you probably can't sustain that.

But that hasn't stopped tasks from being delegated in ways that are both unachievable and unsustainable. It leads to employees missing a mark that they would have never been able to hit. Even the best among us on a team where they are the go-to professional and could run the position with their eyes closed have their limits. People can feel engaged for only so long, but they can also reach a point where they experience burnout (more on that in a bit).

Adding to the overload is the active efforts made by companies to make the shareholders happy. This is achieved through increased profits and company growth. This also involves cutting costs and downsizing where needed. Increasingly, this takes the form of cutting teams of people down in size while leaving them to do the same amount of work. Often, this can result in an employee doing the same amount of work that three were doing a short time ago. Worker efficiency is required to go up to maintain this, but it can only go so high. The result is burnout, and it's achieved increasingly fast as companies continue to downsize in the futile quest for 100% efficiency.

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Not if. When.

The response to all this extra work may seem obvious. Just say no. Right? If only it were that simple. And there are some among us that have no issue doing that. For many, this is not an option. At the end of the day, most people are accountable to their managers or supervisors and are expected to produce a result as per their position. Based on the results they produce, those supervisors make staffing decisions, and often have a lot of power over what happens. As a worker, my priorities will likely boil down to one of two options:

I want a promotion and need to impress

I don't want to get fired so I need to look reliable

And these both hinge on keeping the management (the people responsible for making these two things happen) happy. So if they come in one morning and say they downsized the team by 50% and those left are responsible for shouldering the extra load, you may want to say no, but will you? Most workers who find comfort in job security will take on the burden without a word.

The end result of this is, again, burnout. Worker efficiency being forced to remain high for too long leads to feelings of being overwhelmed and unsatisfied, and it's causing people to mentally tap out. Increasingly, people are realizing that chasing a promotion or raise within the same company is a grind and are turning to job hopping for an easier path. For those that choose the harder route, they find themselves mandated to work with greater efficiency, often at the cost of their own satisfaction, and for a smaller payoff.

The increase in worker efficiency then leads to employee churn. This churn sees employees replaced with new ones that are more willing to take on the excessive workload. Without the proper training, these new employees are doomed to struggle managing what's in front of them. They will be unlikely to ask for help out of a need to either impress or maintain job security, and accept extra tasks piled on their lap. The cycle repeats.

Employee churn is bad for employers too, and they have the best chance of breaking the cycle by ensuring that worker efficiency is managed properly. The cost to train and onboard, as well as the cost of losing good team members to churn, can and will pile up quickly.

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Less is More

Managing worker efficiency is important and finding that balance is critical to the long term health of your employees and your team. There are several strategies that can be used to help ease the burden of the workload and increase morale, but below are three really good ones that could go a long way to creating a healthier work environment.

Staff Appropriately

If you have a job that required six people in the past, don't try to get it done with three. If you think you'll be busy and only want to give hours to two people, consider bringing in a third person. Is a task particularly technical? Bring in a specialist or shift someone with experience doing it. If your team feels they are being left to fail, they will start to burn out. Will it cost a little more to give those hours? Yes. But would you rather that or hire someone new and train them when that person leaves? Invest in your team and they will invest in you.

Slow and Safe

When you go fast, things get missed. Work needs to be redone. Are you really benefiting from worker efficiency if they get a task done an hour early then have to spend an extra half day fixing mistakes? Encourage making steady progress that allows for quality work over quantity. As I mentioned above, people are not 100% efficient and can make mistakes. On job sites, this can be used to enhance safety as well. Is it more efficient for one employee to carry an 80lb load across the yard versus two? Yes. Is it safer? No. Prioritize steady progress over speed. Make the job a marathon, not a sprint.

Microbreaks

Encourage your team to take microbreaks. Yes, this is absolutely not efficient. But the benefit that your team will get from even a couple minutes reprieve is amazing. Especially if there is a moment of downtime with nothing urgent on the go, a quick check of social media and a cat video for good measure can be a mental reset. Within reason, this is a very healthy practice and can help to stave off the effects of burnout. I made that running analogy earlier in this article. Think of the microbreak as a water station. Does that sort of idea appeal to you if you were running in the heat? That is the equivalent of what a microbreak can do for your team.

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A Happy Team is a Healthy Team

You cannot reach 100% worker efficiency sustainably. The focus should not be on creating the most efficient team possible and forcing nonstop work onto your crew. Instead, focus on building an environment which encourages forward progress at a steady rate. Cultivating a work and company culture which allows people to be satisfied and engaged is difficult, but adapting practices that avoid burnout and churn will go a long way to solidifying a team that will stick with you. There will be times that you will need your team to operate with greater efficiency, but embrace the times where it isn't needed. Life isn't a sprint, and work doesn't always need to be either.

~IR

Do you find yourself with too much on your plate at work? What do you do to combat against burnout? Maybe you just have a comment to add? Check out the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn page and let everyone know. Don't forget to follow or like the page for updates! And share this article if you feel others should give it a read!

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