Employers, managers, and executives have always preached about building trust and transparency in the workplace.  

But let’s face it: the need to “see people in chairs” has never come from a place of trust. Now that many of us have moved to remote work environments, the same goes for watching team members’ “green dots” or activity status.

While leaders anxiously attempt to ensure their teams are at work, workers anxiously attempt to appear busy… even when they already are. It’s costing everyone time, energy and productivity. This disconnect between managers and workers has a name: productivity paranoia. 

The secret to successful teams has always involved hiring the talent you trust to get the work done. 

 struggle to leverage trust and team transparency.

Most leaders misuse team transparency features

There’s an obvious problem with green-dot-watching: just because someone's active on Teams or Slack it doesn’t mean they’re doing productive work.

Other problems lurk beneath the surface, too. Heavy focus on team members’ activities leads to a host of issues, including the following.

When managers reach out to check in, ask for status updates or otherwise ascertain what workers are doing, it creates workplace distraction. According to Asana, the top three culprits for 

Combined, these distractions cost U.S. businesses 

 a year. Constant communication interrupts people’s ability to engage in 

When employees know they’re being watched, their attention switches to staying visibly active rather than being productive.

“Employees can’t focus on their actual work if they are constantly worried about their green light,” Jenn Fulner at Recruiting Daily 

. The green dots are “at best a superficial measure of productivity, and at worst, a major distraction.”

 of remote workers feel they’re working too hard or too many hours to avoid appearing as if they’re slacking off. This anxiety often leads to burnout and poor mental health.

 to oversee people and measure productivity. In fact, employee surveillance software demand rose 

However, monitoring software can feel invasive—especially when used without employee knowledge. It also presumes the overseer has a complete understanding of which activities are productive and which aren’t.

The leading monitoring software options on the market ask leaders to designate “productive” and “unproductive” apps and sites. Leaders may make these designations without realizing that team members sometimes use “unproductive” sites like social media platforms to source leads or troubleshoot issues with others in their industry. There’s also something to be said for taking some quiet time to meander, think creatively and problem-solve.

Productive remote work environments require trust and transparency

Of course, there’s a reason why employee monitoring software exists. With 

 of employees admitting to wasting time at work, leaders simply want to be sure tasks are indeed getting done—especially with the prevalence of the remote work model.

How do we prioritize trust and team transparency while also ensuring productivity?

Productive work isn’t black and white. A team member can spend eight hours a day on your company’s apps but still produce little work. Work 

For example, Luxembourg employees are more than 

 as productive per hour as Americans, despite working 340 fewer hours a year. In this case, productivity was measured as GDP per capita.

 productivity output as “the number of items/goods produced or services provided, based on the amount of input.” Admittedly, this proves tricky when it comes to knowledge workers.

“As we’ve shifted to a knowledge economy, it’s much squishier to measure what output actually looks like,” organizational professor Scott Sonenshien 

. Without physical products to measure, managers fall into the trap of thinking activity = productivity.

How do we solve productivity problems? Try asking:

Which key performance indicators (KPIs) represent those measures?

Once you’ve done that, use the KPIs to track employee output.

Develop transparent digital infrastructure

In addition to reworking how you measure productivity, you’ll want to leverage team transparency to empower your teams to collaborate in ways that work for them.

“Implementing best practices that revolve around transparency, trust and asynchronous communication are the building blocks for creating [a sustainable] remote work environment,” Doist head of remote Chase Warrington 

. “These should be baked into the foundation of any distributed organization.”

In this case, team transparency could look like using digital work analytics software that doesn’t just provide visibility to leadership. Rather, teams should be able to discuss among themselves which app and site-usage insights would be most helpful for their team. Then, they can consent to share that information to make working together easier.

For example, when we used Produce8 to audit our 

, we discovered we were all mostly online from 9am to 12pm PST. We decided to keep synchronous work (such as meetings and real-time messaging) in that timeframe moving forward and empower 

 throughout the rest of the day. Additionally, seeing how we were using—or more accurately, 

using—Slack gave us opportunities to make setting and usage changes to reduce distractions and optimize our internal communications.

Be among the first to create a more open and transparent digital work environment for you and your team.

“The important part of any anti-distraction strategy is to avoid micromanaging employees and making them feel distrusted or watched,” 

 Kiely Kuligowski at Business News Daily. “You want to provide opportunities for employees to do what works best for them in terms of focus and productivity.”

It should go without saying you need to trust your teams to do the jobs you hire them for. People at high-trust companies report 

 higher productivity compared to low-trust ones, after all.

By building teams you trust to do their jobs, and then giving them the space and time to do good work, you lay the groundwork for success.

Struggling to build trust? Try identifying communication channels that would exist in the office (like the water cooler or break room) and recreating them digitally. Alternately, look into virtual team-building opportunities to foster connection.

Retain trustworthy people with team transparency

Trust and transparency tend to feed off one another with amazing results for both employees and their companies.

“When an organization is more transparent with their employees, they tend to be more successful in several areas,” 

 Glassdoor. “They have increased employee engagement, stronger company culture, and transparency fosters a type of comfort that allows employees to freely communicate.”

Not only is transparency linked to increased employee morale, but it also 

 rates. With the cost of losing an employee ranging anywhere from 

 of their salary, there’s a real bottom-line advantage to keeping employees around and happy.

Retaining team members also means less disruption overall, fueling productivity and success.

Optimize your remote work environment with transparent practices

Looking to the future, remote work promises to be a major feature of successful companies. 

Getting it right will require adapting from old practices like clock-watching and seat-filling. These practices were honestly already outdated years ago for many industries.

If your remote work environment is siloed and disconnected, there are ways to fix that. Focus first on the things you already trust your team to do. With those things in mind, brainstorm ways you can give them more team transparency and freedom to do those things easily. 

As you build trust with your teams, you’ll find it simpler to expand it into other areas. Remember, trust and transparency feed off of each other. The more you give, the more you’ll get in return.

Here's why we're building Produce8 and how we're helping remote and digital-first teams work better together.

Employers, managers, and executives have always preached about building trust and transparency in the workplace.  

But let’s face it: the need to “see people in chairs” has never come from a place of trust. Now that many of us have moved to remote work environments, the same goes for watching team members’ “green dots” or activity status.

While leaders anxiously attempt to ensure their teams are at work, workers anxiously attempt to appear busy… even when they already are. It’s costing everyone time, energy and productivity. This disconnect between managers and workers has a name: productivity paranoia. 

And this still applies. Yet many remote teams struggle to leverage trust and team transparency.

Let’s talk about it.

Most leaders misuse team transparency features

There’s an obvious problem with green-dot-watching: just because someone's active on Teams or Slack it doesn’t mean they’re doing productive work.

Other problems lurk beneath the surface, too. Heavy focus on team members’ activities leads to a host of issues, including the following.

Over-communication

When managers reach out to check in, ask for status updates or otherwise ascertain what workers are doing, it creates workplace distraction. According to Asana, the top three culprits for workplace distraction are:

email

meetings, and

interruptions.

Combined, these distractions cost U.S. businesses $37 billion a year. Constant communication interrupts people’s ability to engage in deep work.

Employee anxiety

When employees know they’re being watched, their attention switches to staying visibly active rather than being productive.

“Employees can’t focus on their actual work if they are constantly worried about their green light,” Jenn Fulner at Recruiting Daily explained. The green dots are “at best a superficial measure of productivity, and at worst, a major distraction.”

One study also found 41% of remote workers feel they’re working too hard or too many hours to avoid appearing as if they’re slacking off. This anxiety often leads to burnout and poor mental health.

Assumptions about productivity

Some companies use employee monitoring software to oversee people and measure productivity. In fact, employee surveillance software demand rose 58% from 2019 to 2022.

However, monitoring software can feel invasive—especially when used without employee knowledge. It also presumes the overseer has a complete understanding of which activities are productive and which aren’t.

The leading monitoring software options on the market ask leaders to designate “productive” and “unproductive” apps and sites. Leaders may make these designations without realizing that team members sometimes use “unproductive” sites like social media platforms to source leads or troubleshoot issues with others in their industry. There’s also something to be said for taking some quiet time to meander, think creatively and problem-solve.

Productive remote work environments require trust and transparency

Of course, there’s a reason why employee monitoring software exists. With 89% of employees admitting to wasting time at work, leaders simply want to be sure tasks are indeed getting done—especially with the prevalence of the remote work model.

Measure work output, not input

Productive work isn’t black and white. A team member can spend eight hours a day on your company’s apps but still produce little work. Work output is far more important than work input.

For example, Luxembourg employees are more than twice as productive per hour as Americans, despite working 340 fewer hours a year. In this case, productivity was measured as GDP per capita.

Clockify defined productivity output as “the number of items/goods produced or services provided, based on the amount of input.” Admittedly, this proves tricky when it comes to knowledge workers.

“As we’ve shifted to a knowledge economy, it’s much squishier to measure what output actually looks like,” organizational professor Scott Sonenshien conceded. Without physical products to measure, managers fall into the trap of thinking activity = productivity.

How do we solve productivity problems? Try asking:

What is the team member’s task?

How can we measure task completion?

Which key performance indicators (KPIs) represent those measures?

Once you’ve done that, use the KPIs to track employee output.

Develop transparent digital infrastructure

In addition to reworking how you measure productivity, you’ll want to leverage team transparency to empower your teams to collaborate in ways that work for them.

“Implementing best practices that revolve around transparency, trust and asynchronous communication are the building blocks for creating [a sustainable] remote work environment,” Doist head of remote Chase Warrington insisted. “These should be baked into the foundation of any distributed organization.”

In this case, team transparency could look like using digital work analytics software that doesn’t just provide visibility to leadership. Rather, teams should be able to discuss among themselves which app and site-usage insights would be most helpful for their team. Then, they can consent to share that information to make working together easier.

For example, when we used Produce8 to audit our Slack usage, we discovered we were all mostly online from 9am to 12pm PST. We decided to keep synchronous work (such as meetings and real-time messaging) in that timeframe moving forward and empower asynchronous work throughout the rest of the day. Additionally, seeing how we were using—or more accurately, overusing—Slack gave us opportunities to make setting and usage changes to reduce distractions and optimize our internal communications.

Build remote teams you trust

“The important part of any anti-distraction strategy is to avoid micromanaging employees and making them feel distrusted or watched,” wrote Kiely Kuligowski at Business News Daily. “You want to provide opportunities for employees to do what works best for them in terms of focus and productivity.”

It should go without saying you need to trust your teams to do the jobs you hire them for. People at high-trust companies report 50% higher productivity compared to low-trust ones, after all.

Struggling to build trust? Try identifying communication channels that would exist in the office (like the water cooler or break room) and recreating them digitally. Alternately, look into virtual team-building opportunities to foster connection.

Retain trustworthy people with team transparency

Trust and transparency tend to feed off one another with amazing results for both employees and their companies.

“When an organization is more transparent with their employees, they tend to be more successful in several areas,” said Glassdoor. “They have increased employee engagement, stronger company culture, and transparency fosters a type of comfort that allows employees to freely communicate.”

Not only is transparency linked to increased employee morale, but it also boosts retention rates. With the cost of losing an employee ranging anywhere from 50-250% of their salary, there’s a real bottom-line advantage to keeping employees around and happy.

Retaining team members also means less disruption overall, fueling productivity and success.

Optimize your remote work environment with transparent practices

Looking to the future, remote work promises to be a major feature of successful companies. 

If your remote work environment is siloed and disconnected, there are ways to fix that. Focus first on the things you already trust your team to do. With those things in mind, brainstorm ways you can give them more team transparency and freedom to do those things easily. 

As you build trust with your teams, you’ll find it simpler to expand it into other areas. Remember, trust and transparency feed off of each other. The more you give, the more you’ll get in return.

How to Build Trust and Establish Transparency with a Remote Team

Digital is the future of work in today’s remote-first world. But there are visibility problems we absolutely need to address. 

Teams are using ever-evolving stacks of cloud-based SaaS tools to navigate their workdays, but they don’t have good insight or understanding into how everyone else is using those same tools. There are no internal usage benchmarks to compare with.

All tools are acquired for a purpose. But if those tools aren’t being used as expected—or aren’t being used at all—that’s a problem.

 each year on underused, unused and duplicate SaaS tools. While SaaS management platforms exist for monitoring these solutions, the visibility and oversight they provide often live with a single department that may not understand what effective usage looks like across the unique teams within an organization.

And that’s not the only visibility issue. Because digital teams can’t see what everyone else is doing throughout the workday, internal communication frequency tends to creep up.

And people spend more time moving between apps trying to find the information they need to do their work.

It’s distracting, it’s exhausting and it’s costing workers an average of an hour and a half of work time each per day.

There’s a lack of understanding of what effective tech stack usage looks like for a team, but also the team is spinning its wheels trying to understand how the work is going in general.

We know there’s a problem. Now how do we get it under control?

Getting onboard with digital work analytics

The first step is to start gathering analytics on what digital work looks like for your team. But rather than putting one department or even individual in charge of managing the data for the entire organization, it’s time to make the data visible to everyone—data democratization.

Enable everyone on your team to see how everyone else is navigating the workday.

 enable a fully transparent work environment in which everyone on a team, from the top down, can begin to see how that team’s people are using their technology and interacting with each other.

Working out loud like this helps teams start to pick out their tech usage patterns and any problematic communication habits.

Start analyzing your team’s digital work data

By reviewing and analyzing your team’s tech usage over time, you can paint a picture of where time is being spent, how much time gets devoted to specific tech tools and how much time is actually leftover for deep work after things like meetings, messages and emails are out of the way.

So what can your team do with that information?

Notice that calls are taking over the workdays? It might be time to make some changes in terms of meeting frequency and length—maybe even introduce something like no-meeting Fridays to give the team back more time to get things done.

Found that several members of your team aren’t using a key piece of technology that’s helping others on the team achieve greater success? You might consider offering additional training or adjusting your onboarding process to emphasize the tool. Or maybe it’s not as important a tool as you initially thought.

Shocked to see no one on your team is going more than 15 minutes in a day without getting pulled back into Slack? It’s probably time to make some setting and policy changes to reduce all the distractions your team is facing. Every time someone gets pulled away from what they’re working on and into Slack—or any app for that matter—time is lost to refocusing.

You might have felt some of these issues already, but seeing the indisputable data helps to prioritize where action is needed most. 

It also helps ensure when you make changes, you’re going to measure results and see them through successful outcomes.

Create a better remote work environment for your team

Leveraging digital work analytics enables your team to create a feedback loop for continuous improvement. Because making changes is great, but measuring whether those changes made a positive impact is where the real magic happens.

With a digital work analytics tool, you can identify challenges in your team’s tech usage and work patterns, make changes and then re-analyze the data to see whether the changes you made had the desired outcome.

If the future of work is digital and increasingly remote, then it’s crucial for teams to focus on making sure that the environment is built for productivity and success. And creating more visibility and transparency so that problems can be identified and rectified is a huge step in the right direction.

Digital is the future of work in today’s remote-first world. But there are visibility problems we absolutely need to address. 

Teams are using ever-evolving stacks of cloud-based SaaS tools to navigate their workdays, but they don’t have good insight or understanding into how everyone else is using those same tools. There are no internal usage benchmarks to compare with.

So why is this a problem?

All tools are acquired for a purpose. But if those tools aren’t being used as expected—or aren’t being used at all—that’s a problem.

The average company wastes more than $130,000 each year on underused, unused and duplicate SaaS tools. While SaaS management platforms exist for monitoring these solutions, the visibility and oversight they provide often live with a single department that may not understand what effective usage looks like across the unique teams within an organization.

And that’s not the only visibility issue. Because digital teams can’t see what everyone else is doing throughout the workday, internal communication frequency tends to creep up.

More messages get sent.

More meetings get scheduled.

And people spend more time moving between apps trying to find the information they need to do their work.

It’s distracting, it’s exhausting and it’s costing workers an average of an hour and a half of work time each per day.

We know there’s a problem. Now how do we get it under control?

Getting onboard with digital work analytics

The first step is to start gathering analytics on what digital work looks like for your team. But rather than putting one department or even individual in charge of managing the data for the entire organization, it’s time to make the data visible to everyone—data democratization.

Enable everyone on your team to see how everyone else is navigating the workday.

Which apps are being used?

When are they being used?

By whom are they being used?

And for how long?

Digital work analytics tools like Produce8 enable a fully transparent work environment in which everyone on a team, from the top down, can begin to see how that team’s people are using their technology and interacting with each other.

Working out loud like this helps teams start to pick out their tech usage patterns and any problematic communication habits.

Let’s get into that.

Start analyzing your team’s digital work data

By reviewing and analyzing your team’s tech usage over time, you can paint a picture of where time is being spent, how much time gets devoted to specific tech tools and how much time is actually leftover for deep work after things like meetings, messages and emails are out of the way.

So what can your team do with that information?

Notice that calls are taking over the workdays? It might be time to make some changes in terms of meeting frequency and length—maybe even introduce something like no-meeting Fridays to give the team back more time to get things done.

Found that several members of your team aren’t using a key piece of technology that’s helping others on the team achieve greater success? You might consider offering additional training or adjusting your onboarding process to emphasize the tool. Or maybe it’s not as important a tool as you initially thought.

Shocked to see no one on your team is going more than 15 minutes in a day without getting pulled back into Slack? It’s probably time to make some setting and policy changes to reduce all the distractions your team is facing. Every time someone gets pulled away from what they’re working on and into Slack—or any app for that matter—time is lost to refocusing.

It also helps ensure when you make changes, you’re going to measure results and see them through successful outcomes.

Create a better remote work environment for your team

Leveraging digital work analytics enables your team to create a feedback loop for continuous improvement. Because making changes is great, but measuring whether those changes made a positive impact is where the real magic happens.

With a digital work analytics tool, you can identify challenges in your team’s tech usage and work patterns, make changes and then re-analyze the data to see whether the changes you made had the desired outcome.

If the future of work is digital and increasingly remote, then it’s crucial for teams to focus on making sure that the environment is built for productivity and success. And creating more visibility and transparency so that problems can be identified and rectified is a huge step in the right direction.

What is Digital Work Analytics, and How Can it Improve Remote Work? 

, what do you picture? If it involves teams gathered at the office—or even huddled around their computers between 9 and 5—think again.

Increasingly, we’re seeing companies use flexible work models such as hybrid work, asynchronous work and even the 

. Thanks to rapid advances in remote work capabilities, employers and employees alike have more power than ever before to shape and control their workweek.

So what does the future of work actually look like? Overwhelmingly, work is moving home. In 2022, McKinsey found that 58% of workers have the option to work from home at least part-time and that 

“Most industries support some flexibility, but digital innovators demand it,” the report adds. 

It reveals that the vast majority of computer and mathematical workers have a flexible work schedule and that 77% are willing to work remotely.

Painting a picture of the future of work requires taking these—and other statistics—into consideration. Here, we lay out some of the most interesting data about flexible work for both employers and employees.

The benefits of a flexible work schedule for employees are plentiful. Even beyond the obvious perks of working in your pajamas and saving on gas, there’s a lot to consider.

A survey of 3,000 employees by Global Workplace Analytics found a typical employee can save 

 a year if they work from home. This number increases in large cities and for workers who move to less expensive areas.

As wages lag behind rapidly rising inflation, the value of these savings increases. In fact, nearly 

 of millennials and Gen Zers report flexible work has saved them money. It’s likely a contributing factor to their resistance to a return to the office.

 of workers with jobs that can be done from home are choosing to do so at least some of the time. One of the biggest reasons cited is that working from home has made it easier to balance work and their personal life, according to 64% of respondents.

This valuable balance is thanks in large part to 

 options. Asynchronous work allows workers to communicate and collaborate during their unique productivity peaks and personalize their work schedules to meet their individual needs and preferences.

Work from home, or wherever your heart is.

Gone are the days when workers absolutely had to live in the same city as their company’s physical office. The future of work is mobile.

The number of digital nomads rose from 4.8 million in 2018 to more than 

 Americans also planned to relocate in 2022 thanks to remote work. Of them, 28% intended to move more than four hours away.

Where are people moving? Perhaps expectedly, the flow is mostly from high-cost-of-living cities to more affordable areas.

Data shows San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City are experiencing the 

 in the country. People want to live where their dollar goes further and, in some cases, where they can be 

Without a commute, work-from-home employees automatically regain nearly 

 on average of time normally spent on the road. That’s five more hours of free time per week to spend with family, engage in hobbies or do whatever brings workers a better sense of work-life balance.

That’s good news for employers, too. Research shows 

 of people consider work-life balance in their job search, and 

 of employees with a good work-life balance say they plan to stay at their current jobs.

In addition to freeing up time, reduced commutes are good for the planet. In the U.S., 

 of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation—mostly from cars, trucks, and buses. In Canada, a switch to telework for all employees able to work from home was projected to reduce emissions from transportation by 

And globally, carbon emissions dropped by 

 metric tons between 2019 and 2020. It was the 

 since the Second World War according to researchers.

How employers benefit from flexible work models

Nearly all of these employee remote work benefits lead to wins for employers as well. Consider these stats when envisioning the future of work.

Fewer people in the office means lower costs.

 in the wake of the pandemic, and experts doubt we’ll ever reach pre-COVID occupancy rates again. This isn’t exactly a loss. Global Workplace Analytics says letting employees work from home just half of the time can save companies up to 

With the cost of providing employee laptops and supply stipends being far lower than that, flexible work is the obvious choice. Many companies already offer anywhere between $1,000 one-time stipends (Google) to a $500 stipend plus coverage of employee internet bills (Chegg). 

Compared to $11k a year, that’s a steal.

Flexible work leads to greater happiness and productivity.

The added flexibility of remote work allows employees to balance work and home life, leading to higher rates of employee satisfaction. In fact, one study found employee happiness increases by up to 

 more productive than unhappy ones, according to research.

 of those who work remotely at least a few times per month show increased productivity. They did more work in less time, or more work in the same period of time.

Happier employees equals better retention.

Seeking a more flexible work schedule is the 

 most popular reason why workers are looking for a new job. Job seekers, at least 

 of them, want flexible work options. Meanwhile, 

 of current employees say they’d quit their jobs if they were required to go back to the office full-time.

Research by Bloomberg shows offering remote work just two days a week reduced quit rates by 

 and significantly increased employee satisfaction, work-life balance and intention to stay at a job. Just look at Spotify: the company allowed its 6,500 employees to work anywhere. Employee turnover dropped by 

According to SHRM, the average cost per hire is 

. This doesn’t include any losses incurred from positions sitting unfilled, slowing down productivity. The better your retention, the better your bottom line.

Remote work opens the door to more talent.

When it comes time to fill positions, flexible work brings yet another benefit for employers. 

Rather than limiting your candidate search to a geographic region, the world becomes your talent pool.

As Chris Herd, CEO of Firstbase, Tweeted: "We hire the best person in the world for every role. Our competitors hire the best person they can afford in a 30-mile radius.”

A flexible work schedule also makes jobs more welcoming for parents, caregivers and workers with 

. Employees and employers alike can even save on relocation costs and friction. And one more bit: surveys suggest 

 of hiring managers feel remote work has opened up their ability or willingness to utilize more freelancers.

While it’s impossible to predict exactly what the future of work will look like, a few things are certainly clear.

Companies that offer flexible work experience higher employee retention and productivity.

They save money and enjoy a bigger talent pool.

Meanwhile, employees of those companies experience higher satisfaction, flexibility, and savings.

They commute less, live where they want, and reduce our impact on the planet.

How prevalent will flexible work be? COVID-19 spurred widespread adoption, with 

 of the U.S. workforce working from home at least part-time in 2021. However, that won’t necessarily be the new normal.

Estimates forecast that we’ll level out to 

 of the U.S. workforce working from home at least part-time after the pandemic ends. That means some workers will return to the office full-time in the near future, but many will spend at least some working hours at home.

When you envision the future of work, what do you picture? If it involves teams gathered at the office—or even huddled around their computers between 9 and 5—think again.

Increasingly, we’re seeing companies use flexible work models such as hybrid work, asynchronous work and even the 4-day work week. Thanks to rapid advances in remote work capabilities, employers and employees alike have more power than ever before to shape and control their workweek.

So what does the future of work actually look like? Overwhelmingly, work is moving home. In 2022, McKinsey found that 58% of workers have the option to work from home at least part-time and that 87% take advantage of that option.

It reveals that the vast majority of computer and mathematical workers have a flexible work schedule and that 77% are willing to work remotely.

Painting a picture of the future of work requires taking these—and other statistics—into consideration. Here, we lay out some of the most interesting data about flexible work for both employers and employees.

Here’s your glimpse into the future…

The future of work for employees

The benefits of a flexible work schedule for employees are plentiful. Even beyond the obvious perks of working in your pajamas and saving on gas, there’s a lot to consider.

Remote work saves employees money.

A survey of 3,000 employees by Global Workplace Analytics found a typical employee can save $2,500 to $4,000 a year if they work from home. This number increases in large cities and for workers who move to less expensive areas.

As wages lag behind rapidly rising inflation, the value of these savings increases. In fact, nearly 40% of millennials and Gen Zers report flexible work has saved them money. It’s likely a contributing factor to their resistance to a return to the office.

Asynchronous work provides flexibility.

The Pew Research Center reports 77% of workers with jobs that can be done from home are choosing to do so at least some of the time. One of the biggest reasons cited is that working from home has made it easier to balance work and their personal life, according to 64% of respondents.

This valuable balance is thanks in large part to asynchronous work options. Asynchronous work allows workers to communicate and collaborate during their unique productivity peaks and personalize their work schedules to meet their individual needs and preferences.

Work from home, or wherever your heart is.

Gone are the days when workers absolutely had to live in the same city as their company’s physical office. The future of work is mobile.

The number of digital nomads rose from 4.8 million in 2018 to more than 15.5 million in 2022.

According to Upwork, 19 million Americans also planned to relocate in 2022 thanks to remote work. Of them, 28% intended to move more than four hours away.

Where are people moving? Perhaps expectedly, the flow is mostly from high-cost-of-living cities to more affordable areas.

Data shows San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City are experiencing the highest outflow in the country. People want to live where their dollar goes further and, in some cases, where they can be closer to family.

Flexible work reduces commutes.

Without a commute, work-from-home employees automatically regain nearly an hour a day on average of time normally spent on the road. That’s five more hours of free time per week to spend with family, engage in hobbies or do whatever brings workers a better sense of work-life balance.

That’s good news for employers, too. Research shows 72% of people consider work-life balance in their job search, and 33% of employees with a good work-life balance say they plan to stay at their current jobs.

Less commuting helps the planet.

In addition to freeing up time, reduced commutes are good for the planet. In the U.S., 29% of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation—mostly from cars, trucks, and buses. In Canada, a switch to telework for all employees able to work from home was projected to reduce emissions from transportation by 11%.

And globally, carbon emissions dropped by 1.89 billion metric tons between 2019 and 2020. It was the greatest relative fall since the Second World War according to researchers.

In terms of creating a sustainable workforce, it’s a win for the future of work.

How employers benefit from flexible work models

Nearly all of these employee remote work benefits lead to wins for employers as well. Consider these stats when envisioning the future of work.

Fewer people in the office means lower costs.

Office vacancy reached a height of 17.2% in the wake of the pandemic, and experts doubt we’ll ever reach pre-COVID occupancy rates again. This isn’t exactly a loss. Global Workplace Analytics says letting employees work from home just half of the time can save companies up to $11,000 a year per worker.

With the cost of providing employee laptops and supply stipends being far lower than that, flexible work is the obvious choice. Many companies already offer anywhere between $1,000 one-time stipends (Google) to a $500 stipend plus coverage of employee internet bills (Chegg). 

Compared to $11k a year, that’s a steal.

Flexible work leads to greater happiness and productivity.

The added flexibility of remote work allows employees to balance work and home life, leading to higher rates of employee satisfaction. In fact, one study found employee happiness increases by up to 20% with a flexible work schedule.

How does that benefit employers?

Happy employees are around 12% more productive than unhappy ones, according to research.

Another survey found that 77% of those who work remotely at least a few times per month show increased productivity. They did more work in less time, or more work in the same period of time.

Happier employees equals better retention.

Seeking a more flexible work schedule is the third most popular reason why workers are looking for a new job. Job seekers, at least 55% of them, want flexible work options. Meanwhile, 50% of current employees say they’d quit their jobs if they were required to go back to the office full-time.

Research by Bloomberg shows offering remote work just two days a week reduced quit rates by one third and significantly increased employee satisfaction, work-life balance and intention to stay at a job. Just look at Spotify: the company allowed its 6,500 employees to work anywhere. Employee turnover dropped by 15%.

According to SHRM, the average cost per hire is $4,683. This doesn’t include any losses incurred from positions sitting unfilled, slowing down productivity. The better your retention, the better your bottom line.

Remote work opens the door to more talent.

When it comes time to fill positions, flexible work brings yet another benefit for employers. 

As Chris Herd, CEO of Firstbase, Tweeted: "We hire the best person in the world for every role. Our competitors hire the best person they can afford in a 30-mile radius.”

A flexible work schedule also makes jobs more welcoming for parents, caregivers and workers with disabilities. Employees and employers alike can even save on relocation costs and friction. And one more bit: surveys suggest over half of hiring managers feel remote work has opened up their ability or willingness to utilize more freelancers.

The future of work is flexible

While it’s impossible to predict exactly what the future of work will look like, a few things are certainly clear.

Companies that offer flexible work experience higher employee retention and productivity.

They save money and enjoy a bigger talent pool.

Meanwhile, employees of those companies experience higher satisfaction, flexibility, and savings.

They commute less, live where they want, and reduce our impact on the planet.

How prevalent will flexible work be? COVID-19 spurred widespread adoption, with 45% of the U.S. workforce working from home at least part-time in 2021. However, that won’t necessarily be the new normal.

Estimates forecast that we’ll level out to 25 to 30% of the U.S. workforce working from home at least part-time after the pandemic ends. That means some workers will return to the office full-time in the near future, but many will spend at least some working hours at home.

A Few Powerful Stats that Prove Flexible Work is the Future of Work

. It can be difficult to find enough of it during a busy digital work day between the messages, the meetings and all those noisy notifications. There’s so much digital distraction at play.

Business leaders may feel frustrated by productivity levels, unmet targets or projects that aren’t moving along as quickly as they’d like. Why can’t the team get more work done?

But these same leaders will also be the first to ping you for updates, start more project chat channels and schedule yet another meeting to discuss the status of work.

With all the time we’re spending managing communication tasks and activities—this work about work that doesn't 

 create value for a business in the long run—how are we supposed to get the 

This isn't just a matter of finding a great personal productivity hack, either. It's a team problem and it's a company problem. Why? Because nobody can really opt out of the collective noise...certainly not in a 

If we want to start having more focus time in the workday, which ultimately is when the meaningful work and progress happens, we need to get real about what our digital work days truly look like from a technology-usage perspective. Our technology usage paints a pretty clear picture of what our workday looks like, afterall. And if we can see where the noise and distraction is happening, then we have a strong starting point for collectively addressing it.

From the top down, entire teams need full visibility—even proof—of how much all the over-communication and low-value busy-work are truly impacting our ability to 

Collaboration is scrambling our brains and shredding our workdays

We all have feelings and perspectives about the various distractions preventing us from having more focus time each week.

For C-suiters, time spent in apps like Teams and Slack is often imagined as team members sending each other endless cat memes and chatting about their weekends instead of working. Some are even green-dot-watching—because if you don’t appear online, that must mean you aren’t working, right? The thing is, execs are often able to unplug from tools like Slack, and they also have people around them that can help. But what about the rest of the team? Can they opt out?

Probably not. For the team, there’s a desperate feeling that after all the interruptions, context switching and follow-ups they need to do in a digital work day, there’s just not enough time to do what needs to be done. Please, not another Zoom call! 

Feelings and perceptions are often worth exploring and discussing, of course. But facts are facts. The ability to look at the data around how digital work days and weeks unfold with our patterns of tech usage creates much better opportunities for fruitful discussion.

How much time in our days is getting eaten up by the messages, meetings and notifications? And how much time is leftover? Seeing the open blocks of time—or more likely, lack thereof—can be pretty eye-opening.

How often do we move between our apps and our communication tools? The realities of most people’s context switching—maybe even yours—might shock you.

And how often do we spend long stretches of time completing work in single apps? Probably less often than you think, and certainly less often than we should.

The reality is, if you and your team want more focus time to do that deep, meaningful work, then something’s got to give. You need to:

eliminate activities and interactions that aren’t providing value so you can create more time for scheduling focus space, and

choose to disconnect and move into asynchronous work mode when the opportunities arise. Sometimes scheduled focus blocks don't survive when they collide with the reality of working on a team. The answer is a mix.

Clear, real-time visibility into what’s happening in your digital work days can provide 'ah-ha' moments and create opportunities for change to start happening. And changes that help everyone work more efficiently and effectively are in everyone’s best interest.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it

C-suiters and every member of the team for that matter may have a hard time swallowing how much time is actually being devoted to just communicating about work and navigating between periods of work. But 

measuring and acknowledging these technology patterns is the important thing you need to start doing if you want to create more focus time in your digital work days

 offer that visibility into digital teamwork and technology usage patterns. And once a team’s habits and patterns start to be revealed, it becomes a whole lot easier to identify inefficiencies and unproductive interactions that can be trimmed out.

A lot of Slack and Teams users end up working synchronously in these tools for well over an hour every day.

 How much of that is productive and how much is just distracting? It depends on your job and the kind of week you’re having, certainly. But what are the trends you’re seeing over time? It’s also important to note the total time is not the big issue. It's how it’s spread out and the costs of refocusing over the course of the day. Trying some new settings and procedures around your team's usage of communication tools can give everyone back some time and quiet workspace.

Digital notifications can become not just distracting, but also mentally overwhelming. 

And often people find some of these notifications don’t even provide any value or actionability. Leveraging the mute functionality and even eliminating notifications that aren’t helpful reduces a lot of mental distraction and time-wasting context switches.

Too many teams fall into the habit of scheduling too many meetings—and having too many team members in on those meetings.

 Getting more intentional about when meetings are needed, what the agenda and expected outcomes are, how long the meetings should last and who really needs to be present is an effective way to give people back some focus time. You might even consider trying initiatives like 

According to a recent study from McKinsey & Company, 

 of executives are already either considering or starting to implement some changes to the way meetings happen within their organizations in response to new distributed work models.

“In our efforts to connect across our organizations, we’re drowning in real-time virtual interaction technology, from Zoom to Slack to Teams, plus group texting, WeChat, WhatsApp, and everything in between,” wrote McKinsey. “There’s seemingly no excuse to not collaborate.”

It’s becoming more widely known that we’re dealing with a huge 

 problem here and that changes are required. But how do we know if the changes we’re making are actually working?

Measuring the process and outcome of any changes you make is key. Comparing views of the digital work day before and after shows the evolution.

You can clearly see whether the changes you’re making are having an impact.

You can clearly see if the changes are having the desired impact.

And you can clearly see if more changes are still required.

Productive digital work weeks include more focus time

We’re all so busy. But it still seems hard to get work done, and it’s because of all the 

 we’re up against in the modern digital teamwork environment.

Ahh focus time. It can be difficult to find enough of it during a busy digital work day between the messages, the meetings and all those noisy notifications. There’s so much digital distraction at play.

Business leaders may feel frustrated by productivity levels, unmet targets or projects that aren’t moving along as quickly as they’d like. Why can’t the team get more work done?

But these same leaders will also be the first to ping you for updates, start more project chat channels and schedule yet another meeting to discuss the status of work.

With all the time we’re spending managing communication tasks and activities—this work about work that doesn't really create value for a business in the long run—how are we supposed to get the real work done?

This isn't just a matter of finding a great personal productivity hack, either. It's a team problem and it's a company problem. Why? Because nobody can really opt out of the collective noise...certainly not in a remote teamwork reality.

If we want to start having more focus time in the workday, which ultimately is when the meaningful work and progress happens, we need to get real about what our digital work days truly look like from a technology-usage perspective. Our technology usage paints a pretty clear picture of what our workday looks like, afterall. And if we can see where the noise and distraction is happening, then we have a strong starting point for collectively addressing it.

From the top down, entire teams need full visibility—even proof—of how much all the over-communication and low-value busy-work are truly impacting our ability to do more of the stuff that really matters.

Collaboration is scrambling our brains and shredding our workdays

We all have feelings and perspectives about the various distractions preventing us from having more focus time each week.

For C-suiters, time spent in apps like Teams and Slack is often imagined as team members sending each other endless cat memes and chatting about their weekends instead of working. Some are even green-dot-watching—because if you don’t appear online, that must mean you aren’t working, right? The thing is, execs are often able to unplug from tools like Slack, and they also have people around them that can help. But what about the rest of the team? Can they opt out?

Probably not. For the team, there’s a desperate feeling that after all the interruptions, context switching and follow-ups they need to do in a digital work day, there’s just not enough time to do what needs to be done. Please, not another Zoom call! 

Feelings and perceptions are often worth exploring and discussing, of course. But facts are facts. The ability to look at the data around how digital work days and weeks unfold with our patterns of tech usage creates much better opportunities for fruitful discussion.

How much time in our days is getting eaten up by the messages, meetings and notifications? And how much time is leftover? Seeing the open blocks of time—or more likely, lack thereof—can be pretty eye-opening.

How often do we move between our apps and our communication tools? The realities of most people’s context switching—maybe even yours—might shock you.

And how often do we spend long stretches of time completing work in single apps? Probably less often than you think, and certainly less often than we should.

The reality is, if you and your team want more focus time to do that deep, meaningful work, then something’s got to give. You need to:

eliminate activities and interactions that aren’t providing value so you can create more time for scheduling focus space, and

choose to disconnect and move into asynchronous work mode when the opportunities arise. Sometimes scheduled focus blocks don't survive when they collide with the reality of working on a team. The answer is a mix.

Clear, real-time visibility into what’s happening in your digital work days can provide 'ah-ha' moments and create opportunities for change to start happening. And changes that help everyone work more efficiently and effectively are in everyone’s best interest.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it

C-suiters and every member of the team for that matter may have a hard time swallowing how much time is actually being devoted to just communicating about work and navigating between periods of work. But measuring and acknowledging these technology patterns is the important thing you need to start doing if you want to create more focus time in your digital work days.

Digital work analytics tools like Produce8 offer that visibility into digital teamwork and technology usage patterns. And once a team’s habits and patterns start to be revealed, it becomes a whole lot easier to identify inefficiencies and unproductive interactions that can be trimmed out.

For example:

A lot of Slack and Teams users end up working synchronously in these tools for well over an hour every day. How much of that is productive and how much is just distracting? It depends on your job and the kind of week you’re having, certainly. But what are the trends you’re seeing over time? It’s also important to note the total time is not the big issue. It's how it’s spread out and the costs of refocusing over the course of the day. Trying some new settings and procedures around your team's usage of communication tools can give everyone back some time and quiet workspace.

Digital notifications can become not just distracting, but also mentally overwhelming. And often people find some of these notifications don’t even provide any value or actionability. Leveraging the mute functionality and even eliminating notifications that aren’t helpful reduces a lot of mental distraction and time-wasting context switches.

Too many teams fall into the habit of scheduling too many meetings—and having too many team members in on those meetings. Getting more intentional about when meetings are needed, what the agenda and expected outcomes are, how long the meetings should last and who really needs to be present is an effective way to give people back some focus time. You might even consider trying initiatives like asynchronous work hours and no-meeting Fridays.

According to a recent study from McKinsey & Company, 80% of executives are already either considering or starting to implement some changes to the way meetings happen within their organizations in response to new distributed work models.

“In our efforts to connect across our organizations, we’re drowning in real-time virtual interaction technology, from Zoom to Slack to Teams, plus group texting, WeChat, WhatsApp, and everything in between,” wrote McKinsey. “There’s seemingly no excuse to not collaborate.”

It’s becoming more widely known that we’re dealing with a huge digital work problem here and that changes are required. But how do we know if the changes we’re making are actually working?

Measuring the process and outcome of any changes you make is key. Comparing views of the digital work day before and after shows the evolution.

You can clearly see whether the changes you’re making are having an impact.

You can clearly see if the changes are having the desired impact.

And you can clearly see if more changes are still required.

Productive digital work weeks include more focus time

We’re all so busy. But it still seems hard to get work done, and it’s because of all the digital distractions we’re up against in the modern digital teamwork environment.

We can’t work like we used to anymore. It’s clear we need to start evolving our work habits and patterns to create more space to think and actually do the meaningful stuff that drives business success.

But again, it’s a problem that starts at the top and trickles down through the entire team.

Let’s create a better understanding of how we’re all being pushed to navigate our digital work days so we can start toning down the over-communication, doing a lot less work about work, and maybe even creating some more calm and mental wellbeing in our days while we’re at it.

It all starts with seeing the data about our habits and patterns and committing to positive change.

Remote First

How to Build Trust and Establish Transparency with a Remote Team

What is Digital Work Analytics, and How Can it Improve Remote Work?

A Few Powerful Stats that Prove Flexible Work is the Future of Work

The Important Thing You Need to Start Doing to Create More Focus Time in Your Digital Work Weeks

3 Experts Discuss the Future of Remote Work and Whether or Not The Office Is Going Extinct

8 Digital Distractions Continually Impairing Your Productivity and Remote Teamwork

We Haven’t Proved Anything About Remote Work in the Last Two Years

5 MSP Business Leaders Discuss the Future of Work

6 Tips For Building a Better Hybrid Work Model

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