2024-06: Intensity & After-Hours Chat
Last updated
Last updated
© Worklytics Co.
Release Date: June 2024
Our goal at Worklytics is to understand how work gets done - and how it could get done better.
As we partner with clients to think through thorny topics like delayering or talent development, we often discover new ways to describe work.
We’re excited to share 2 new ways that we’re modeling how work gets done:
New metric: worklytics:v1:weekdays:avg:intensity:pct
Hybrid work has changed the shape of our workday. Specifically, hybrid has elongated the span of our day: we log in earlier (no commute!) and tend to sign off later than we did when we were in-office.
But hybrid has also changed the intensity of our workday. People take advantage of having a more flexible schedule to split their work into multiple bursts spread across a longer period of time – the "triple-peak day."
For most of us, hybrid work increases our workday span (we’re "online" for longer) but decreases our workday intensity (we take frequent breaks).
If your company measures span, you should also be measuring intensity. We measure intensity as time spent on digital work as a % of overall workday span. So for instance, it’s not uncommon to see a 10-hour workday span with an intensity of 70%, meaning 7 hours of digital work over the 10-hour period.
If span is up, you’d expect intensity to decline as employees juggle work & home tasks across the day. If you see both span and intensity increasing, that’s a strong signal of burnout risk.
An important note: Workday intensity is not the same thing as productivity. Intensity is looking at the frequency of digital collaboration, and doesn’t tell us anything about the value of the work or what gets done offline.
New metrics:
chat:v1:incoming:after-hours
chat:v1:outgoing:after-hours
chat:v1:incoming:manager:after-hours
One of the biggest elongators of workday span is after-hours messaging. Chat on Teams and Slack has become widespread. Particularly in a hybrid setting, we find DMs are the main way that managers keep in contact with their teams.
Unfortunately, these tools can lend themselves to an "always-on" way of working. It's easy for managers to send a quick ping after-hours that inadvertently triggers a cascade of late-night activity, adversely impacting work-life balance across the team.
Some after-hours messaging is expected, but it’s concerning if late-night scrambles are a team’s de facto way of working.
To see if you’ve got a problem, take a look at:
Incoming vs Outgoing DMs: Is this team initiating the fire drill or responding to one?
Manager-Initiated After-Hours DMs: How frequently are your managers sending after-hours DMs to their direct reports?
How much is too much after-hours action? Employees that receive more than 15 after-hours Slack DMs during the week are at higher risk for burnout, especially if those messages come from a direct manager.
For more on these metrics and more, please check out our Metric Definitions.
