The world of work has faced a paradox since the industrial revolution. Managers realised that applying technology and enforcing better processes boosted performance but looking after employees (then from a health and safety point of view), would also. These days it’s not a health and safety issue but more about engagement. The paradox is that it takes opposing strategies to drive engagement and productivity and ultimately, performance.

Overall, the industrial revolution marked a transformative era in which productivity was propelled by technological advancements, division of labour, mass production, urbanization, improved infrastructure, standardization, and capital investment. These factors collectively revolutionized industries and paved the way for modern manufacturing techniques.

Once these building blocks were taken care of there was a realisation that poor working conditions impacted productivity and this led to the introduction of health and safety measures – designed to stop manual workers from being killed (in the worst cases). In the best cases, they were seen as a route to ensuring staff were better rested and more productive.

Pull – engagement

Today, most jobs are different and many are in the services sector and in the knowledge business – meaning hours of sitting behind a desk, keeping on top of emails and using our brains like never before.

How do you devise a set of strategies like health and safety but intended to make us more productive in our service and knowledge work?

Mental health awareness has improved and support for employees exist to ensure they are mentally fit to do work today’s jobs require. Companies seem genuinely interested in “doing the right thing” and many things are being done under the guise of “wellness”.

In addition to wellness activities, many other culture building activities are being conducted, all in an effort to support employee engagement.

It is in this sense, with these types of activities, that I mean this is a pull strategy. Employees are being “pulled” or supported to engage more deeply in the company’s activities, ultimately to drive performance.

But a problem remains – that proving the financial benefit of having a mentally robust and well workforce is hard. Few have made the economic case for managing mental health as a route to increasing productivity or growth. Which doesn’t mean its not possible or being attempted.

Microsoft where I work (disclosure) is working hard at this and has the means to measure this with tools like Viva Insights, Glint and Pulse. These are all tools geared toward understanding engagement and what form it takes and how different activities impact on that. The image shows the specific offerings from Microsoft in this area, more here.

I’ve also documented how I am working with customers to map engagement data with performance data in this post: Microsoft 365 customer questions – Sales Productivity

Push – productivity

Nowadays, managers think productivity is about place and are pushing workers to come back to the office in the belief they will be more productive. Although the verdict is still out, there is a view that remote work which became prevalent in the pandemic, is not quite the panacea everyone hoped it would be.

Employers are pushing in many other ways too, for workers to be more productive, including providing technology to support that, just as back in the industrial revolution day.

Where I work, this technology is offered in abundance to employees, as well as for customers. Here is a really good post that documents how the technology is used at Microsoft: A foundation for modern collaboration: Microsoft 365 bolsters teamwork – Inside Track Blog.

This is what I mean by a push strategy, the proactive ways in which employers are pushing employees to adopt new technologies, processes, policies and the like, all in the pursuit of improved productivity and performance.

And then consider all the current efforts in applying AI to improve productivity. I am writing a new trend report on this – find out more about it here: Future of HumAIn Work.

The paradox

There isn’t a tension in this paradox, it’s not so much a carrot and stick approach, at least if well orchestrated. It just requires an appreciation of the differences in tactics and strategies.

I think seeing it from a push and pull vantage point is helpful. You need to lean in with some approaches and others are about letting go. Maybe the metaphor of an accelerator pedal is helpful. Sometimes you need to apply pressure and other times you take your foot off the pedal and let the car coast on its own momentum.

So too with performance, sometimes you have to apply pressure in driving productivity, other times its about giving employees space and time to breathe and engage naturally into a positive performance.