📣 Ashley Browne, HR Specialist @ Looking for my next team:
“Online time” is a data point, sure — but it’s a weak one, and not very useful. Remote performance issues are almost always rooted in a lack of clarity, not a lack of green‑dot availability in Slack or Teams.
And honestly, this is part of a bigger shift we’re seeing. Remote work is the segue into shorter workweeks and reduced hours without reducing pay. Once you decouple productivity from physical presence, you start to see that most knowledge work doesn’t require 40 hours of linear, synchronous time. It happens in waves — bursts of creativity, periods of deep focus, and asynchronous collaboration.
So instead of tracking “online time,” I’d focus on systems that create clarity and visibility without surveillance, like team working agreements, pulse‑based performance reads, and role clarity matrices. These give managers real signals without pretending that presence equals performance.
📣 Rachel Diskin, HR and Operations Consultant @ Big Change Consulting:
@Ashley Browne I agree! My best tool for this is a work plan. I keep it very simple- a spreadsheet. The first tab is the year at a glance, and then each tab is project-based, with deliverables and deadlines. I treat it as a living document, and we reference it at weekly 1:1's.
I managed a team of 8 who had unlimited PTO. The work plan was my saving grace. Someone requests a week off? Go take a look at the work plan and see what's happening around that date. From a higher level, you can plan within your department, see how workloads compare across staff, and learn when you can ask staff to support one another during busy/slow time periods.
📣 Erin Seymour-Dye, Founder @ sipsi:
Strong opinions here. Recent data is showing that traditional performance management is doing the opposite of what it's intended to do. It's actually demotivating employees and, tying ratings to pay increases actually activates the threat response.
In the orgs I've worked for, we instead elevate manager capability to have clear, organic, regular conversations about what's needed, what's working, how to collaborate, etc. We embed these conversations naturally into workflows (this is where AI can help a lot - some systems will nudge managers to have these conversations to drive performance and engagement - Perceptyx is one that will integrate with systems you already use while using your company's survey metrics for specifics).
Marcus Buckingham has some great info on this.
Here's a short vid on his approach.
One of my favorite things he says about performance is to identify someone's strengths to motivate them - he calls this "investigating excellence" so that you can get MORE of that excellence out of someone. At the same time, focusing on strengths is hugely motivating for employees and leads to more job satisfaction and productivity (I mean, imagine if someone told Caitlin Clark that she's too good at basketball...so should focus on dancing instead). Rambling, but I hope this is helpful 🙂
📣 Jessie Fields, Sr Director, People Strategy & Ops @ C2FO:
I agree with the great advice provided here. Further surveilling employees will backfire. Poor company performance is rarely the result of "unproductive" employees (and if there are a few folks not performing, that needs to be addressed personally). I imagine it's more likely a signal of poor strategy.
Do employees know where the company is trying to go? Are senior leaders aligned on the path forward? Is it clear what success looks like? Can everyone articulate what they should stop, start, and continue doing to help turn company performance around? Clarity of strategic priorities and a vision of a more inspiring future is going to help way more than arbitrary productivity metrics.
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