With the impact of Covid19 on our workplace, the percentage of people remote working from home has skyrocketed. Working from home has its own unique challenges but if your goal is to increase productivity, it is important for you to understand how crucial the role habits can play.

The habits we develop can have a significant impact on our productivity. Our goal should be to replace bad habits that are often caused by reactive patterns of behaviour with good habits that will make us proactive and enable us to take charge of our own agendas.
​
While we are experiencing workplace changes, it is an opportune time for us to review our work habits to change any unproductive habits and build new more productive ones.

The following are 12 ways to form habits that increase work productivity.

Habit 1 - Start each day with a plan.
Having a plan can drastically increase your work productivity. A plan can enable you to focus on what’s important instead of getting distracted by unforeseen tasks that inevitably pop up.

It is a good habit to create a plan during the afternoon for the following day. Select any essential tasks that are crucial for you to finish by the end of the day and then block out times in your calendar to complete them. For the most important work it is suggested that you use the most productive times of the day when you are most efficient.

Remember, if you fail to plan then you plan to fail.
​
Habit 2 - Try to minimise distractions
Minimising unwanted distractions will help keep you on task and increase productivity. Wearing headphones when there are noise distractions or reducing visual distractions such as pop-ups on your computer screens are just a couple of simple ways to increase productivity.

Habit 3 - Concentrate on one thing at a time
Single tasking is one key action towards improving productivity. Research has shown that multitasking can negatively influence your productivity. You may think that by multitasking you will get more done, but when you jump between tasks, your cognitive processing is hindered and you are less productive. By focussing on a single task enables you to get into a deeper state of mental concentration and achieve your most efficient results.

Working deeply can take a lot of energy and effort so it’s important that you take breaks. The Pomodoro Technique provides a useful guideline when working intensely. Work 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a 5-minute break.

Habit 4 - Start your day early
Early in the morning is a time when it has been shown that your creativity and willpower is strongest. Coupled with this is the time of day when you feel fresh and energised. By starting early you can also reduce the number of interruptions you may get as emails, phone calls and personal interruptions become more frequent during the day.

Habit 5 - Time-blocking works wonders
Time blocking is an excellent way to organise your time more efficiently by assigning tasks to time blocks that you have divided the day into.

By time blocking you can be proactive by prioritising your most important tasks and focus on one task at a time increasing proactivity.

Habit 6 - Close your inbox
Email is one of those 21st Century tools that you could not do without but it can also be one of your biggest distractions. By time blocking specific times to check and reply to messages and having your inbox closed and out of sight for the rest of the day can be a significant habit that will lead to greater productivity.

Habit 7 - Take small steps
A huge project can often feel daunting and we begin procrastinating over it. We find other tasks such as cleaning out our desk or redesigning our work space to put it off. A more effective approach is to break the project into smaller achievable steps that forms a list of tasks that are much more manageable and motivational.

Habit 8 - Reward yourself
Create a positive mental cycle by rewarding yourself for completing work and doing a job well done. When you finish a task, reward yourself and this will make you feel more inclined and motivated to begin the next task. For mental health, the habits of treating yourself when you reach milestones and celebrating success will have a positive effect on future productivity.

Habit 9 - Eat smart
The World Health Organisation has estimated that eating the right food can boost our brain power by up to 20%. An important habit to increase productivity is to eat healthily and regularly. Choosing nutritious foods and avoiding sugary snacks that make you crash will help you work at your best. Skipping meals can make you tired, irritable and mentally fatigued  negatively  affecting your productivity.

Habit 10 - Exercise regularly
A healthy habit such as regular cardiovascular exercise can be a crucial factor in working productivity. Exercise can boost your memory, attention span, creativity and can also lower stress and improve mood - a plethora of positive outcomes to increase your productivity.

Habit 11 - Use productivity apps
If you want to be the best you can you need to take advantage of the best, most efficient tools that are available to you. There are many apps that are available to boost your productivity and you should be building your arsenal of technology to give you the edge in a very competitive market. A great example of this is Microsoft To Do. This app syncs between your mobile and desktop to help you keep on top of your to-do lists and organise tasks by stream and deadline.

Habit 12 - Delegate wisely
Taking the burden and workload of too many tasks can be anti-productive. If you are trying to carry too much weight on your shoulders you likely to crash and burn but by delegating wisely you can share this load. If there is someone else who is better suited to a job then delegate it. Smart delegation of jobs when needed helps you achieve your goals without sacrificing productivity.
​
By developing good habits you can build a productive workplace to help you work to your potential.

​Collagis is committed to helping businesses like yours to optimise workforce and organisational effectiveness. We'd love to share with you how we can help you to improve productivity.
​
The Personal Efficiency Program (PEP) helps individuals and teams to improve personal productivity and gain back on average 2 hours per person per day for meaningful work. Ask us for more information about how this could help your organisation to thrive.
​

Did you know? “One in four Australian workers (25%) would sacrifice company perks for better wellbeing in their workplace and one in five workers would sacrifice a promotion (21%) or a pay rise (19%). Stressed workers would more readily sacrifice company perks (28%) and a pay rise (27%) for better wellbeing in their workplace” (McMillan, 2017 Workplace Wellbeing).

Implementing a workforce wellbeing program can be one of the levers organisations can pull to help their teams thrive. See below some suggested actions organisations can take in order to help improve wellbeing of their workforce.

Offer Health and Wellness Benefits
Providing resources for employees to engage in health and wellness activities is a common way of supporting employee wellbeing.

This may be in the form of onsite workout facilities (Google, Hootsuite, Adidas), gym discounts, team fitness activities (e.g., step challenges, team games, sports days), or just encouraged scheduling of regular fitness time in the calendar.

To address mental wellbeing, several companies such as Yahoo, Google, Nike, Pearson, and Salesforce offer onsite meditation rooms for their employees to rejuvenate their mind and body (MarketWatch, 2018). Providing access to, or encouraging use of, apps like Insight Timer, Headspace and Smiling Mind are another way to offer these services remotely.

Setting Priorities and Boundaries
One of the most common factors impacting wellbeing is workplace burnout. This can be prevented by setting realistic goals for your employees, helping to provide time management tools and training, helping employees set healthy work-life boundaries and respecting these boundaries. Being clear on priorities and setting realistic deadlines are also key.

These things are easier said than done, but as burnout continues to rise after a challenging 2020, Managers and employees alike would benefit from new tools to maintain energy in the workplace.

Addressing employee engagement
Studies reveal that highly engaged teams tend to be 21% more profitable than non-engaged teams (Forbes, 2019).

Understanding the level of engagement and the factors causing these levels is just the start; being able to create and implement plans that address underlining issues of engagement is crucial to engendering positive change.

Learning and Development
From financial education to physical and mental health education, employers can provide individuals access to training that improves their personal wellbeing as well as their professional wellbeing.

Access to Professional Support
Many companies offer employee support programs to provide critical professional services in times of difficulty. Whilst very important in a time of crisis, these services can also be beneficial for everyday mental health. To improve uptake of these services, organisations would benefit from reinforcing anonymity and suggesting commonplace uses to remove any barriers and stigma from utilising these services.

Social wellbeing
Managing your employees remotely can mean employees may sense a feeling of isolation or disconnection. This should be considered in a change communication and engagement plan – being sure that both formal communication forums (such as Town Halls, team off-sites) and informal social interactions (e.g., social events)  allow for authentic social connection. Games such as fun questions, guessing games, and personality quizzes can help provide icebreakers that break monotony and promote camaraderie among employers.
​
Time
Breaks. Time off. Annual Leave. These are all important factors supporting health and wellbeing. One of the easiest things organisations can do to support overall wellbeing is to provide the time for employees to reenergise and renew.

Whilst there are no quick fixes or silver bullets to address wellbeing in the workplace, the list above provides a few examples of what organisations can do to address employee wellbeing. Managers must set an example, to provide the permission for others to do the same. And we all must take action to ensure  wellbeing strategies and programs come off the shelf and become part of our everyday lives.

Collagis is committed to helping businesses like yours to optimise workforce and organisational effectiveness.
We'd love to share with you how we can help you address workplace wellbeing in your workplace.

Links to references

           Food Mag. (2018, April 09). The cost of absenteeism. Retrieved December 10, 2020, from FoodMag: https://foodmag.com.au/the-cost-of-absenteeism/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20Australian%20employees%20take,%2444%20billion%20per%20year2.
           
             Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2015). Happiness and productivity. Journal of Labor Economics, 33(4), 789-822.

           Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2011). Needs and subjective wellbeing around the world. Journal of personality and social psychology, 101(2), 354

           Wu, H., Sears, L. E., Coberley, C. R., & Pope, J. E. (2016). Overall wellbeing and supervisor ratings of employee performance, accountability, customer service, innovation, prosocial behavior, and selfdevelopment. Journal of occupational and environmental medicine, 58(1), 35.
​

Whilst workplace wellbeing has always played a pivotal role in ensuring optimal utilisation of human resources (Nordea, 2020), its importance since  the 2020 pandemic cannot be overlooked.
​
How we invest in human capital at this time may prove the difference between businesses that stand the test of time and those that do not. Our people survived through 2020, holding on to optimism that things will eventually return to normal. As 2021 is upon us, and a new normal emerges, are we prepared to
help our employees thrive in this new world?​

Collagis is committed to helping businesses like yours to optimise workforce and organisational effectiveness.
We'd love to share with you how we can help you address workplace wellbeing. 

COVID-19 has accelerated the transition to remote working, forcing companies to adapt or die. Those companies not re-imagining the way they do business in a digital world, will not find a place in this new reality. The office, customer events, the boardroom and the commute have all changed forever.

As with all things, there are pros and cons of this new way of working, prompting many to ask not when should we go back, but if we should?

Here’s a quick synopsis of how the argument is currently shaping up:
 
The Highs:

1. Losing the commute: If time is our most precious resource, finding another 1-2 hours a day has been a tremendous gift of the pandemic. Giving time back for balancing family and home life, or extra productive work time, is a big advantage. The consequence of no “workplace” to go to means work changes from somewhere you go to something that you do. The boss must trust that you are working (a difficult transition for some) and the focus must shift to outcome rather than face time.

 

1. Employee Productivity: According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), researchers studied knowledge workers in 2013 and again during the 2020 pandemic lockdown and found significant changes in how they are working. They learned that lockdown helps people focus on the tasks that really matter. They spent 12% less time drawn into large meetings and 9% more time interacting with customers and external partners. Lockdown also helped people take responsibility for their own schedules. They did 50% more activities through personal choice and half as many because someone else asked them to. Finally, during lockdown, people viewed their work as more worthwhile.  The number of tasks rated as tiresome dropped from 27% to 12%, and the number we could readily offload to others dropped from 41% to 27%.

 

1. Bottom Line savings: Dynamic office spaces such as hot-desking (pioneered by IBM) focused on maximising office utility (read reducing office footprint cost) rather than employee well-being. Employee reception to this was luke-warm. On the contrary, working remotely (especially from home) has the potential to be the single biggest impact on the cost of corporate spaces. The company benefits from a massively reduced costs in office space whilst at the same time can address the problems of dislocation, disconnection and privacy concerns cited by employees as their main concern with hot-desk environments.

 

1. Acceleration to Digital: The pandemic has forced a rapid and accelerated shift to many superior digital ways of working. Corporate travel whilst not possible right now, will never be the same again. Companies have learned, through necessity, new ways of working, and the reduced travel bills and non-productive travel time are now pains of a by-gone era. Companies are re-imagining the old ways of doing things and recreating processes to operate more efficiently and effectively in the new world.

For example:

• Sales calls replaced by video calls (Zoom, Teams, etc) and physical marketing events being replaced by virtual conferences (e.g.: CES 2021, Amazon’s AWS, Adobe Summit, etc), webinars and contextualised one-to-one marketing.
• Virtual Workshops enabled through virtual whiteboards, post its to support interactive brainstorming (with a digital record to enable effective post workshop action planning!)
• Digital Signatures replacing slow and arduous paper sign off processes.
• A “truly” digital first mindset to customer journey design.

 
Enterprises are compelled to accelerate investment in contactless technology as well as re-engineer processes for the digital world. Whilst before it was a customer expectation now it is a customer necessity. Those that are doing it well are mindful to transform in the move to digital, not just shift and lift, to improve the outcome from the digital experience for both the business and the customer.
 
The Lows:

1. Impacts to Employee Wellbeing:  The feeling of burn-out and being always on has been accelerated by remote working. Research is showing that employees are struggling to switch off and create boundaries between personal and office spaces, as well as experiencing increased mental anxiety and increased financial security concerns in the face of the pandemic. As a consequence, employee wellbeing needs to be an ever-present consideration in the current environment, and companies need to be mindful that the transition to remote working is still a work in progress.

 

1. Employee Social Activity and Collaboration: The social life of employees is radically altered in remote working, creating a void that remains unfilled. This is in part due to COVID lockdown restrictions but also because the opportunity for employees to establish friendships at the office has not yet been effectively replaced in remote working. Employees working in the same office also had the greatest potential for collaboration and creativity due to constant proximity. As a result, many companies are exploring how we leverage existing office space to provide these social and collaboration opportunities in the new world. Organisations into the future will need to consider how to embed and manage culture with remote working, to ensure a company’s culture can continue to be experienced in our home offices and digital interactions. In particular, Companies will need to consider how to manage new staff/ inductions, to help onboard a new employee and make them feel part of the organisation when they may not visit a physical location or meet anyone face-to-face.

 

1. Work from Home Office Environment: We have spent decades crafting our offices spaces to be ergonomic and optimised towards productivity and well-being. Due to the sudden nature of the pandemic, organisations are still discovering how to enable employees to set up an optimised home office space. This can be anything from ventilation and natural lighting, to the right seating, screens, hardware and software to do their job effectively. And even more so, how to ensure safety, security and work/home balance, to create an environment conducive to wellbeing.

 
 
As the effects of the pandemic continue to change the way we work forever, putting people at the heart of what we do today is even more crucial. Whilst we move to a digital, always on environment, we need to find new ways to build human connections and provide new tools and processes that allow people to continue to perform at their best – efficiently and effectively in the new world.
 
 
Links to reference
 
Hot Desking
 
The Psychological Impact of Hot Desking
 
https://www.opensourcedworkplace.com/news/psychological-impact-of-hot-desking#:~:text=Positive%20Psychological%20Impact%20of%20Hot,and%20communication%20in%20the%20workplace.&text=%2D%20Can%20lead%20to%20quicker%20employee,with%20employees%20outside%20their%20team
 
Hot desking affects wellbeing for eight in 10 office workers
 
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/hot-desking-affects-wellbeing-for-eight-in-10-office-workers/
 
Working from home
 
Working From Home Increases Productivity
 
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15259-working-from-home-more-productive.html#:~:text=The%20study%20found%20that%20working,of%20their%20work%2Dlife%20balance
 
Why working from home is bad for productivity
 
https://www.smh.com.au/business/small-business/why-working-from-home-is-bad-for-productivity-20200618-p553wn.html
 
Australians more productive working from home
 
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2020/australians-more-productive-working-from-home-.html
 
Research: Knowledge Workers Are More Productive from Home
 
https://hbr.org/2020/08/research-knowledge-workers-are-more-productive-from-home
 
 
Connecting with Customers in a COVID world
 
Connecting with customers in times of crisis (McKinsey)
 
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/connecting-with-customers-in-times-of-crisis#
 
4 Ways to Reconfigure Your Sales Strategy During the Pandemic (HBR)
 
https://hbr.org/2020/10/4-ways-to-reconfigure-your-sales-strategy-during-the-pandemic
 
Eight ways to keep up with your customers during and after COVID-19
 
https://www.ey.com/en_gl/consumer-products-retail/changing-customer-behavior-growth-strategy

As seen in the Australian Financial Review 

The “new normal” of work is more a work in progress than a done deal but there’s no doubt
that the momentum for change is unstoppable. A survey of 2,500 “working professionals” by recruitment firm Hays in November found that 61 per cent believe that a hybrid working model – part-remote and part-office working – is the most productive.

Hays managing director Nick Deligiannis says the rapid shift to working from home necessitated by the lockdown and social distancing requirements established that “a large percentage of the workforce can work productively and successfully from home”.

Hays research has also discovered that 47 per cent of employers, noting that productivity and
business continuity were not adversely affected by having employees working remotely, are open
to retaining working from home as part of their workplace mix. For many employees, according to Hays, overall performance, job satisfaction and work-life balance improved as less time was spent commuting or dealing with the distractions of office working.

The challenge for employers as the economy reopens is to strike a balance between the work
preferences of employees and the needs of the organisation. This is particularly a consideration
for business leaders who believe that having staff working in a central office has cultural, creativity
and collaboration benefits.

“Employers are looking to the future and how they and their staff can benefit most effectively
from this new way of technology-enabled working,’’ Deligiannis says. ‘‘Organisations everywhere will be going through this process ... [A] hybrid working model could be the ideal middle ground that allows
employees to work flexibly on certain days of the week then come together with colleagues in a
central workplace on others.”

The boon to employee productivity and job satisfaction has been one of the big surprises of
what has been widely dubbed “the great working from-home experiment”. A survey of 2800 knowledge workers in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia found that Australians were more productive working from home than their overseas peers. The survey by business transformation and managed services company Adaptavist found that 85 per cent of Australians, compared with the global average of 82 per cent, reported being equally or more productive when working from home. One-third of respondents said they were more productive than being at the office.

But there were also some downsides to digitally-enabled working from home: one-third of
Australian respondents reported stress arising from being “always on”. “An overnight transition has been forced upon the business world and companies have had to rise to the challenge by doing whatever seems to work immediately,” Adaptavist CEO Simon Haighton-Williams told the Australian Computer
Society’s Information Age.

“Now it’s time to reflect and analyse this, to see what positive patterns have arisen that we need
to reinforce and what negative patterns we see that need to be changed.”

Paul Ventura, managing director of management consulting firm Collagis, which specialises in
workforce and organisational effectiveness, says “everybody is trying to get their head around what
the new reality is going to look like”. “I don’t think there’s been a bigger or more profound adjustment, certainly not since the industrial revolution,” Ventura says.

“What’s happening now has been possible for a long time in terms of available technology but
what’s changed is the mindset around the workplace and employee wellbeing.”

Ventura says the “nature of work” has changed and “remote working is here, and here to stay”. “For many workers the commute will no longer be part of their daily life. For them, work has changed from somewhere you go to something that you do.”

While most employers are satisfied that the working-from-home experiment has been
successful, that recognition is just the beginning of the business transformation that needs to
occur as the economy reopens.

“Dealing with change, navigating the uncertainty and striking the right balance between the benefits of a flexible workplace and the needs of the organisation are the challenges
that now face businesses,” Ventura says.

“The working-from-home experience has created the momentum for change but organisations can’t afford to be too aggressive in pursuing new ways of working. “Changes have to be balanced, reflecting the
needs of employees, the needs of the business and the needs of the customer.”

For many organisations the transformations they embark on will not be limited to the workplace.
“There will be opportunities to grow and expand that weren’t there previously. Equally,
products and services that were a solid basis for growth in the past may no longer be relevant or
sustainable or may be subject to supply-chain disruptions,” Ventura says. “Some organisations will need to consider a change of business model.” Although questions about the future shape of organisations will be more complex for larger organisations, Ventura cautions that “fundamental change is important whatever the size of the organisation”.

The good news, he says, is that whatever form the “new normal” takes, the end result will be
“more efficient and more productive” businesses.