A sustainable approach
We use the term sustainable productivity to describe an approach to work that achieves the necessary outcomes without a cost to employees’ wellbeing. Indeed, the satisfaction and accomplishment that comes from this style of working can boost wellbeing and performance.
Anyone can sprint for a day or even a week. Beyond that? Performance, satisfaction and wellbeing decline. Thinking beyond this immediate future requires us to have skills and frameworks beyond sheer effort and long hours. An approach that we can continue to use without sacrificing our wellbeing.
What is sustainable productivity?
Rather than a rigid process or set of rules, sustainable productivity is a philosophy of work that allows employees to be their best selves at work, achieve their goals and not suffer ill effects as a result.
When we work in a sustainable way, we’re mindful of our limited resources – time, attention and physical energy – and we invest them in our priorities. This means that the stuff that really matters gets the lion’s share of our resources and we plan to reach targets in a realistic way.
We’re aware of the various ways thoughts and emotions can impact our focus, but have the requisite thinking skills to maintain our focus and self-management.
And we have the workload planning and management skills to ensure we work in a way that supports performance standards and wellbeing over the long term. This includes being able to consider the impact of decisions made today on our future performance and health.
How can employees be productive without sacrificing wellbeing?
Productivity isn’t about doing “everything’ or even necessarily doing more. Our definition of productivity is about ‘Doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time’. This emphasises the importance of prioritisation, quality, and timeliness. It’s not about chasing every-growing output targets or unsustainable effort.
This requires employees to understand the demands of their work, plan accordingly, and be proactive when it comes to breaks and rest. It means moving their focus from ‘getting through’ today, or even this week, and thinking longer term about how well their style of working will impact their performance and wellbeing.
Sustainable productivity is built on clarity of required outcomes, including goals and quality targets. Without specificity, the temptation is to always aim for more.
All humans have a limit to what they can achieve – working sustainably is about investing our limited resources (time, attention and energy) to get the best possible output. Without sacrificing their personal time, relationships and recuperation in the name of undefined ‘success’.
What habits support sustainable work?
Sustainable approaches to work will depend on the organisational context and the role and responsibilities of the employees in question. But simple principles, based on human psychology and physiology work across varied contexts, including:
- Ongoing reflection to learn from experience
- Planning with time, attention and energy in mind
- Intentional investment in self-care, rest and sleep
- Clarifying and defending personal boundaries
- Intentional disconnection from workload outside of working hours
How we can help
Coaching
We can provide one-to-one coaching to employees to help them understand the role their working style has on their productivity and performance, identify changes they can make, and provide support and accountability to enable this. This could include learning how to establish and manage work-life boundaries, effective workload prioritisation and management, or addressing the many thinking traps that can hold us back.
Training
We can provide training to employees at all levels to boost their awareness of the key ingredients of sustainable productivity and share systems and processes they can adopt into their routines. This includes topics like effective prioritisation, building focus and minimising distractions, planning and scheduling, reflection, boundary management and self-care.