Think Your Hybrid Workforce is Procrastinating? It Could be a Sign That You've Overlooked This Critical Management Technique. Are managers' concerns about procrastination among their hybrid workforce justified? The story is more complex than it seems.

Managers often complain about hybrid employee procrastination resulting in missing deadlines and task delays, when compared to their in-office colleagues. Research by Microsoft, which surveyed 20,000 people and analyzed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, finds that 85% of leaders believe the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.

As a result, many managers resent having to meet the desires of employees for flexibility in this tight labor market; as companies continue to make job cuts and employers gain greater leverage, they want to force employees back to the office.

Is the concern by managers about procrastination justified? Hybrid workers do often complete tasks later than their managers prefer, as I discovered in helping 21 companies transition to hybrid work.