Three Strategies To Overcome Workforce Productivity Anxiety
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During and following my early 2024 brush with death, reflecting on my hospitalization and being again sidelined for awhile, I discovered that "productivity anxiety" was one reason I had continued to retain stress, despite making numerous lifestyle changes to slough it off. Then, a few weeks ago, Paul and I attended a Village Square event called "Lost & Found: A frank conversation about a generation of struggling young adults."
While the panelists discussed opinions on why many young adults are so anxious, a couple of things were clear to me:
- Many adult parents feel pressed to work harder to get ahead but earn relatively low salaries or hourly rates.
- Parents also face inflationary trends and a diminished value of their dollars, while also feeling increasingly diminished in value as human beings.
As a result, parents often absorb the beliefs that to be of value, they must do more and do it better with less time. They then transmit these beliefs to their children, which perpetuates the cycle and imprints anxiety as the familial and societal norm. It becomes a vicious cycle.
How is this different from performance anxiety? Performance anxiety is anxiety about a specific action, like speaking before a crowd, presenting to potential clients, or worrying about whether a product or service we're delivering is good enough. Productivity anxiety is a deeper, much more prevalent and persistent form of stress in our personal and professional lives. It feels like nothing is ever good enough. It also feels like there are always ways to improve, but never moments of relief to enjoy achievements. And it feels like we need to squeeze tasks into shorter timeframes to be more efficient. Essentially, it's a false form of continuous improvement.
Elon Musk is a brilliant entrepreneur whose leadership focus on workplaces that foster relentless innovation, risk taking, and new ideas has brought massive financial successes through Tesla and SpaceX. As an entrepreneur, business owner, and the richest man in the world, he is the envy of many. I very much respect his visionary capabilities.
But when there are massive layoffs, a culture of censure, grueling work hours, and unrealistic objectives for those who remain, one wonders at the cost of rebuilding a workforce again and again as people burn out and leave.
Alternatively, consider the business model championed by the Jim Moran Family company, which owns Southeast Toyota, other businesses, and is a major contributor to Florida State University's Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship. At JM Family businesses, they have molded the company around the values of mutual respect, consideration, integrity, collaboration, and community. They provide amazing, comprehensive benefits, and their motto is that if you are employed by JM Family, you never leave. As a result, the company has employees and even families who have worked for the company for decades. Hear it from several employees here.
There are many different company leadership approaches, but one that treats its employees as commodities sets them up for productivity anxiety and tends over time to accrue the following:
- Greater absenteeism and turnover
- Lower productivity, despite efforts to improve
- Lower job satisfaction and personal goals
- Lower joint decision-making, collaboration and mutual respect
The ALICE population of the U.S is barely able to afford housing, childcare, food, transportation, healthcare and technology. They are typically considered families living paycheck to paycheck, and are one missed paycheck away from disaster. Our country has held steady at about 42% ALICE since 2022. They are our friends, live in our communities, and work in our businesses. Fear of losing a job and facing financial disaster is common for the working poor, leading employees in this population to work ever harder to keep their jobs and earn enough to pay the bills. Productivity is a major source of anxiety for this population, compounding the anxiety of making sure ends meet.
Here's another group to consider: people with learning disabilities. For instance, we have seen rates of people with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) increase over the past 30 years. They face daily challenges with processing information and because it takes them longer to comprehend information, they may use substances to help them focus, and underneath, their self-esteem suffers. They frequently settle for job roles that require less than their full ability. They struggle to manage their time or emotions well, and often need to avoid noisy environments. They also often suffer from productivity anxiety, because they know that no matter what they do, mistakes will occur. They fear job loss because, unmedicated, they don't typically meet the standard.
As organizational leadership, our charge is to build and grow past obstacles, no matter what is the cause. So how do we as individuals, employees, and business owners end the perpetuating cycle of productivity anxiety that can hamstring our own success? There is a lot of value to be realized by helping reduce this systemic challenge, and here are three ways:
Acknowledge and confirm productivity anxiety is present
First, recognize the signs of productivity anxiety in your workforce. Consider developing and having your human resources department distribute an anonymous, annual, recurring employee survey, based on the job anxiety scale, that can help to determine different types of workplace anxieties, including productivity anxiety.
Align your culture so that staff are able to do their best work
When you have the right people in place, it's a lot more expensive to start over from scratch. I've read articles about how harnessing AI tools helps to remove mundane tasks and re-center employee focus in alignment with their talents, capabilities, and on the areas of highest value. Consider how the time usage of your workforce is tracked and compared against the value it generates, then make a plan for refining job tasks and responsibilities so they better fulfill your organization's purpose. This will help reduce productivity anxiety, and, over time, actually increase productivity.
Apply anxiety reduction solutions through the hiring process
People become anxious when they feel like a commodity. So how do you assess prospective candidates, vet them, and keep the process moving economically? Review how your hiring process balances competency, qualifications, personality, ambition, life stage and cultural fit to produce the right hires, then implement changes in the areas that have deficits. If they are the right fit, and you treat them with respect and courtesy while at the same time requiring a high (but not impossible) level of work, you can lower their productivity anxiety, and interestingly, improve their productivity quality.
Remember that we all suffer from performance anxiety at different points in our lives, but those are episodic challenges. The far greater lift is to reduce or eliminate productivity anxiety, whether it is at the workplace, in our relationships, or just in how we see ourselves. Stress kills, and we are in control of whether we will do something about it or not. But we all certainly don't want to kick the can down the road, and through intentional stress reduction strategies, the exhilaration of business success overcoming anxiety sabotage is ours for the taking.
Bravely yours,
Sue
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