Gartner HR Research Identifies Four Myths That Are Hampering Employee Productivity
“As traditional avenues of growth like market consolidation, labor arbitrage and cheap financing show signs of diminishing returns, CEOs are looking to employee productivity to fuel their growth ambitions in 2025 and beyond,” said Brent Cassell, Vice President, Advisory in the Gartner HR practice. “However, productivity remains difficult for most employers to define, measure and impact.”
Gartner has identified a working measure of productivity for knowledge workers that significantly improves business outcomes, such as revenue, profitability and brand reputation: employees doing quality work consistently and on time – employee efficiency – and employees devoting their time and skills to work that is results oriented and focused on organizational priorities – employee value creation.
The four emerging productivity myths that HR must address to drive their organizations desired business outcomes include:
Myth No. 1: Productivity Is Not HR’s Job
“Employees, managers, and business leaders view productivity in different – and occasionally contradictory – ways and HR is the glue that holds them together,” said Swagatam Basu, Senior Director in the Gartner HR practice.
The HR function must do four things to play an active partnership role in shaping productivity initiatives at their organization:
- Include productivity in HR strategy to secure their seat at the table
- Identify collaboration opportunities for cross-functional productivity initiatives
- Articulate the talent tradeoffs of productivity initiatives to the C-Suite
- Champion employee needs in productivity strategy
Myth No. 2: Using AI Equals Quick Productivity Growth
To achieve the desired productivity benefits of GenAI, HR must plug three productivity leaks: limited awareness, inconsistent adoption and ineffective use. To do so, HR must leverage its core competencies in change management, learning and development and employee experience.
When an organization addresses employees’ awareness, adoption and use of GenAI, employees can be up to 8% more productive, and they’re 2.7 times as likely to experience speed and quality gains from GenAI.
Myth No. 3: Onsite Employees Are More Productive Than Hybrid Employees
“Since onsite employees and hybrid employees are equally productive, it’s clear that productivity is not about where work gets done, it’s about how work gets done,” said Basu.
Gartner analysis of more than 100 work attributes revealed that a supportive team culture has the greatest positive impact on the productivity of both hybrid and onsite employees, increasing employee productivity by up to 11%.
To create a supportive team culture that facilitates productivity, HR leaders need to do two things:
- Enable managers to build team environments where discussions of productivity are used as a positive driving force for team initiatives
- Encourage teams to decide their own core productivity values and ensure feedback is in-line with those ideals and associated behaviors
Myth No. 4: More Data Improves Productivity
“Data is useful, but on its own can provide an incomplete picture,” said Cassell. “What’s needed is understanding the context in which that data was collected. Investing in getting detailed contextual information for a focused set of metrics has almost twice the impact on employee productivity compared to investing in acquiring more quantitative data on a variety of metrics.”
HR can take two actions to ensure their productivity data comes with the needed context:
- Involve those who know the work best in shaping productivity metrics
- Include local perspectives in interpretation of productivity metrics
Organizations that take action on all four emerging productivity myths can increase employee productivity by up to 35%, which translates into an individual employee working 2.8 more hours a day, generating more than $47,000+ in extra revenue annually.
