After a few years of unsettled working due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which required employees to work from home, employers globally are now tackling a return to office work
According to a recent report, 90 percent of companies announced they will require employees to return to the office at least part of the week in 2023, with 77 percent admitting they will change their hybrid working policy in the next year. For one-fifth, employees will be required to return to office-working full-time, whereas 40 percent said they want staff in the office four days a week and 31 percent said three days a week.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index: Pulse Report found that while employees have embraced a new age of hybrid working, 85 percent of employers aren’t confident that they are being as productive outside of the office – leading to ‘Productivity Paranoia’.
The tech giant defined ‘productivity paranoia’ as where leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, the number of meetings and other activity metrics have increased. Their survey found 87 percent of employees reported they are productive at work, but only 12 percent of leaders stated they have full confidence their team is productive.
This disconnect has led to a rise in digital overwhelm, where employers struggle to trust their employees and employees feel pressure to prove they’re working efficiently.
To discover which US cities have the most paranoid employers, The Digital Project Manager has conducted a study, analyzing state laws around employee monitoring, Google searches around the topic and the percentage of Indeed job adverts recruiting remote employees. Each data point was then normalized to give an overall paranoia score.
The study found that the US city where employers are most paranoid is Atlanta, Georgia – with a paranoia score of 8.9 overall.
Researchers discovered that employers in Georgia don’t legally require consent to monitor
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