Invisible Labor: Accounting for the Productivity Paradox
Newsletter from Dr. Jake Tuber
What’s in this Edition:
Feature: 3 Types of Work Tasks
What I’m Consuming
Personal Updates
Invisible Labor: Accounting for the Productivity Paradox
Microsoft’s “Productivity Paradox,” wherein surveys found 85% of managers believe their people are not working hard enough while 85% of employees report feeling overworked, suggests a significant mismatch between desired outcomes and effort expended. One hypothesis is that management lacks visibility into how much truly needs to be done for work to be completed.
This is a problem for organizations. Unrealistic managerial expectations can lead to decreased employee performance, increased stress, and higher turnover rates.
I’m fascinated by all of the unaccounted-for work that occurs in modern environments. The pileup of hard-to-measure tasks seems like a novel problem of knowledge work. Just imagine a merchant in 1000 BCE—or a sales manager as recently as 1975—thinking their employees were slacking off because they were unaware of the amount of time required to properly update Salesforce or incorporate feedback from multiple distant stakeholders for an internal memo.
The “other duties as assigned” catchall in your job description might account for most of your time spent working.
How might we address this? My first thought is that we need to create greater transparency into what jobs actually consist of by unfurling the tasks of the modern workplace. If we can better categorize our work, we can better calibrate for the true nature of modern jobs.
With that in mind, I took a crack at creating a framework for organizing our work tasks. It’s meant to be collectively exhaustive—everything we do at work should fit into at least one of these categories, with many tasks potentially overlapping.
Side note: This is a rough first draft. I’m not satisfied with it and am in need of any and all feedback. After detailing the framework, I’ll share my two hypotheses about its relationship to the Productivity Paradox at Microsoft and elsewhere.
The Three Types of Tasks
1. Essential Tasks: Tasks that are critical to fulfilling the core responsibilities of the role. These tasks are directly linked to achieving key deliverables and KPIs related to your job performance; they are work that must occur for you to perform your job to the minimum acceptable standards.
2. Supportive Tasks: The smaller, often unacknowledged tasks that are essential for success within the organization but may not be formally recognized. These tasks often arise from the need to manage relationships, adhere to organizational norms and politics, or enhance the performance of Essential Tasks. This category includes two major sub-categories:
2a) Relational Tasks: Focused on managing interpersonal dynamics to improve
ongoing performance. This includes activities such as:
Responding to ad-hoc requests
Deliberate efforts to tailor/format communications for different audiences
Attending team meetings to stay in the loop
Networking and building rapport with others
2b) Quality Improvement Tasks: Any efforts undertaken to improve the output quality of essential tasks beyond the minimum for successful job performance. This includes activities such as:
Conducting additional research
Gathering and incorporating ancillary feedback
Developing and promulgating SOPs
(Re)organizing materials for ease of use and understanding
Improving deliverable quality (e.g., presentation materials)
Supportive tasks often refer to work that we imagine we could just ignore, outsource, or would be entirely at our discretion to complete if we had the power and authority to do so. Supportive tasks—particularly Relational Tasks—are highly context-dependent and can vary based on organizational culture, team dynamics, and individual roles.
3. Peripheral Tasks: Ancillary tasks that contribute to the organization’s broader functioning and your own career. This includes activities such as:
Working on projects outside your stated job duties
Completing mandatory training
Engaging in organizational initiatives that build culture and capabilities
Attending town hall meetings
Professional development activities
These are tasks that are often considered important for performing work above a minimum viable threshold and are considered part of being a good organizational citizen.
My Hypotheses:
Managers don’t appreciate how many Peripheral Tasks employees are expected to participate in if they wish to remain in good standing at their organization, let alone advance. The more senior you are, the more discretionary many of these activities become; senior leaders don’t realize that employees can’t just decline these invitations and still show up in the top right of the secret HR nine-box.
Supportive Tasks can be ignored or delegated by more senior leaders; less-powerful employees don’t have that luxury. With respect to Relational Tasks (2a), formal authority affords you the ability to not care. The higher up you are in the food chain, the more you can ignore ad-hoc requests, spend less effort attempting to please stakeholders, avoid ruffling feathers, or even ignore non-vital meetings altogether. Likewise, Quality Improvement Tasks (2b) can often be delegated: someone else can gather more data or spend hours redesigning PowerPoint slides. That can amount to multiple hours each week of work tasks that are often emotionally draining.
This leads me to the most important (double-barreled) question: How would you allocate your time spent working across the three categories, and do you think your manager agrees?
In fact, this question is so important to me that I put together a super-quick, three-question anonymous survey on Google Forms. Please click and complete it right now (seriously, stop reading). How are you spending your time?
What I’m Digesting:
Just finished Number Go Up. It was good. If you’re curious about crypto and the collapse at FTX, I’d strongly recommend it. If you followed the saga closely much of it may be review.
Currently reading The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind. Coates glamorizes trading too much, but it’s an excellent accounting of the relationship between physiology, neurology, and performance. I recommend it.
Also working my way through Verbal Judo: The Art of Gentle Persuasion. I don’t love it, but there are some worthwhile nuggets in here. It’s worth skimming, not reading.
This episode of “If Books Could Kill” deconstructing Hillbilly Elegy is informative and funny.
Personal Life Updates:
Fall has arrived in Westchester, NY, and we’re currently amidst one of the best four-week weather stretches of the year. It’s lovely out.
Our older daughter, Charlotte, has begun her final year of Pre-K and little Isabel had her first birthday last week. It’s been very cute to watch them interact as Isabel gets more mobile. Still, I wish either would sleep for more than four hours straight. Sigh.
I still can’t run – but I’m working on it. Implementing a plan now that may hopefully have me jogging by Q2 2025.
I’m planning to get LASEK surgery in December! I’ve found a cut-free version of the surgery that works for people like me with thin corneas and is safer than traditional LASIK. I actually get $1000 off if I can refer three people for a consultation… so if you’re in NYC and curious, let me know! I’ll buy you dinner.
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Be compassionate and intentional.