Analytics and Measurement of RTO-WFH

Back in the day I worked in a consulting company where I billed at 125% and rarely was in the small office space they had; before we were acquired by bigger company, and they closed our small office. At one point there were 50 consultants and only 20 people could tightly be jammed in. Hey, why pay for space when we were never there?

But the thing that I think back to in that situation is productivity was measured starting with a Statement of Work or SOW. In the SOW there was precise language of what work was to be done, and how long the work was to take for completion of the project. Both the consultant company and the client has clear (most of the time) sets of expectations.

There was also a lot of communication between us and the client, as well as between us consultants and our sales and management team.

For all that to work we needed the SOW and communication processes to meet the mutual collective expectations. It just did not get done on its own. There were built-in processes to meet the project completion.

Being in the client side of the equation, things can at times be more loose. We can always shift projects around, change priorities, or need to fight fires. Project plans are not as strict as when we are paying a vendor to do the work. When it is us working, things more often than not shift. This ends up causing a general lack of analytical data on productivity. Basic things like are projects taking more or less time to complete, is another set of steps to determine. We often do not know where we are in the productivity scale? As we are always shifting things around and fighting fires, productivity is a moving target.

In general, it is more often the case that we measure productivity in number of hours worked, where you are sitting, and a lot of other things. Productivity measurement is often personal perception, what we think and feel, and not based on analytical data. And human perception is an imperfect thing. That can lead to missed opportunities and profitability if we leave measurement of productivity to what humans think and feel.

As I have read articles and watch online information about the argument of WTO-WFH it seemed to me that both sides were never offering any analytical data to show if staff were more productive in one setting or another. My bias is if those making a claim one way or another had analytical data to show projects were getting done faster in one format or the other knew that information, we may not be having the debate. If a company knew that work was taking twice as long to complete when people were working remote, and are not expressing that with staff, why not? And if people working remote were taking half as long to get work done, why would you want to mess with that?

Arguing which way is more productive without the analytical data is like arguing who is the best quarterback of all time. The argument become subjective, who someone feels, feeling of control, self-interest, etc. None of that at the root of business and work should be the desired outcome.

And for the record I hate the 10-20 commuting time WFO and working from home I talk to my dogs way more than I should WFH. Just saying.