2023 Digital Work Trends Report
Where employees spend their time is where their priorities lie–but this often doesn’t line up with their leaders and the larger goals of the company. A big part of this is a misalignment between employees and leaders on priorities and deadlines, which leaves employees guessing on what’s most important at work and leaders scrambling as a result.
Slingshot’s 2023 Digital Work Trends report explores the relationship between employees’ productivity and management. Slingshot surveyed 305 full-time U.S. employees to better understand how employees navigate work and manage as leaders across generations.
PART 2: WORKPLACE MANAGEMENT
Below are the findings for Part 2 of the Digital Work Trends report, which shines a light on how employees’ productivity and performance is impacted by many of the things they look to their leaders for, including priorities, deadlines and the amount of work they’re responsible for.
Many workers have to guess what’s most important at work because they lack clear priorities.
While 40% of employees say they communicate with other employees to identify their priorities, nearly the same amount say they guess on what’s most important (34%), choose what they want to do (31%) or try to work a bit on each project they have (31%).
Older generations are more likely to make their own decisions about their priorities at work.
Nearly half (49%) of Millennial workers (ages 27-42) guess on what’s most important at work, while 33% of Boomer workers (ages 59+) and 35% of Gen X + Y workers (ages 43-58) would rather choose what to do.
Gen Z workers (ages 18-26) are different, potentially because they’re early on in their career and don’t feel comfortable making these larger scale decisions. A majority (55%) of Gen Z workers say they communicate with their colleagues to identify priorities.
Males and females differ in their approach as well: 43% of females would communicate with their colleagues to identify priorities while 45% of males say they would choose what they want to do.
More meetings don’t mean more productivity.
While many employers rely on frequent check-ins to track employees’ progress and empower productivity, employees say their productivity would benefit more from having clear priorities (42%) and set deadlines (30%).
Only 19% of employees say that having more frequent check-ins with their manager/team would make them more productive.
Employees are overloaded and unguided–and they’re losing half of their day because of it.
A majority of employees (64%) say they lose at least 1-2 productive hours a day when they don’t have deadlines–with 22% of employees saying they lose 3-4 hours each day.
Employees also say they lose productivity when they have to juggle too many projects. Sixty-two percent (62%) of employees say they lose at least 1-2 productive hours a day to it, with 20% losing 3+ hours.
Leaders feel the need to step in most when employees’ work isn’t hitting their standards.
More than half of leaders feel the need to closely supervise employees when they are not delivering quality work (69%) or hitting deadlines (52%).
Half of leaders (50%) also say they feel the need to step in when team members are having trouble with co-workers or a specific individual.
Too much time with their boss is making employees feel micromanaged.
Employees feel micromanaged when they’re engaging with their boss more then usual, such as when their boss checks in on them too often (45%) or when they have unnecessary status meetings (43%).
Gen Z workers are the most likely to work overtime to hit a deadline, compared to other generations.
Gen Z workers (ages 18-26) are the most likely to work overtime if they are not going to hit a deadline (55%). Millennials (ages 27-42) are the least likely to do so at 24%.
