Walk into any C-suite conversation right now and one theme dominates: productivity. And it’s not just unfolding inside executive meetings—it’s driving the headlines. Debates about return-to-office mandates are routinely framed as debates about productivity, with in-person attendance positioned as the antidote to stalled performance or fading culture.
This public debate has collapsed two separate issues—productivity and physical presence—into one narrative. But the evidence tells a far clearer story.
Well-designed hybrid work consistently improves engagement, retention, and, in many cases, productivity itself. Employees report they are able to work more efficiently, protect focus time, and better manage their energy when given flexibility in where and when they work.
For HR leaders, this disconnect presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The debate isn’t really about where people sit; it’s about how organizations define, measure, and experience productivity. And no one is better positioned to lead that redefinition than HR leaders.
Hybrid Didn’t Create a Productivity Problem—It Revealed a Measurement One
Most anxiety surrounding hybrid work stems from measurement systems built for another era. As the research shows, many organizations still rely on legacy metrics—time in seat, output volume, visible activity—systems built for an in-office world that can’t capture how value is created in a distributed one.
When those signals stop working, leaders understandably look for the most visible cue to latch onto, usually attendance. But visibility is not value. And surveillance is not measurement. Monitoring keystrokes, scanning badge data, or tracking idle time won’t restore productivity; it will erode trust.
Research continues to show that cultures built on trust outperform cultures built on visibility. Stanford researchers found that hybrid employees not only maintained productivity but had one-third higher retention rates, a clear sign of what’s possible when autonomy and clarity reinforce one another. When employees feel trusted, engagement rises and teams bring more energy to their work. Strengthening productivity, in other words, comes from setting clearer expectations and building the alignment people need to do their best work.
This is where HR leadership becomes essential: making productivity transparent by defining clear outcomes and the behaviors that drive them, and doing so with employees at the table.
What HR Leaders Must Do Now to Redefine Productivity
Redefining productivity in a hybrid era starts with transparency—making expectations visible, shared, and grounded in how work actually gets done today. Research from Deloitte and RAND shows that sustainable performance comes from clear outcomes supported by engagement, autonomy, and well-being. To sustain excellence within flexible work arrangements, business leaders must redefine productivity through the following interconnected outcomes:
- Business impact measures the results, quality, and innovation that advance strategic goals.
- Collaboration captures how teams connect, share knowledge, and generate new ideas across locations.
- Engagement reflects the energy, focus, and well-being that enable long-term efficiency and effectiveness.
But transparency only works when it’s grounded in employee experience and input. In one mid-size organization we supported, the CEO wanted to make “Boosting Productivity” a top priority for 2026, driven by a lingering belief that performance had never fully recovered post-COVID, even with new tools, hybrid flexibility, and larger teams.
Before introducing any new expectations, leaders needed to understand how these norms would land and what was actually hindering productivity in the day-to-day. With Seramount’s support, they brought roughly 1,000 senior leaders together for an Employee Voice Session to pressure-test a draft of their new “Ways of Working That Strengthen Performance.” Leaders were asked directly: What feels clear? What feels unclear? And what won’t work, given the reality of how your teams operate today?
Instead of resistance, employees surfaced practical friction points—meeting overload, unclear priorities, inconsistent modeling—that would have quietly derailed the rollout. Their input allowed the company to refine expectations around impact, collaboration, and engagement so the standards were clear, usable, and culturally aligned.
This is the work HR must lead: co-creating outcome-based standards and the everyday behaviors that bring them to life. When employees help build the system, expectations gain credibility, trust strengthens, and productivity becomes something people can meaningfully achieve—not something measured through outdated proxies.
The Enablers of a Modern Productivity System
Once productivity standards are clear and co-created, HR leaders must ensure the rest of the system reinforces them.
Managers must lead with consistency, connection, and fairness.
In hybrid environments, proximity should not determine opportunity. Yet research shows remote employees remain less likely to be promoted or recognized. Managers must support their employees by communicating expectations, mitigating bias, and maintaining meaningful weekly conversations that anchor performance and well-being. These habits are what create equitable, high-performing hybrid teams—not physical visibility.
AI must be implemented in ways that protect human engagement.
AI can accelerate output, but research from Nature and the Harvard Business Review shows it can also dampen employees’ sense of ownership and connection if introduced without intention. HR leaders can guide organizations to adopt AI through structured experimentation, transparent communication, and the reinforcement that AI augments—not replaces—human judgment and creativity.
Burnout is one of the most expensive drains on productivity. Gallup estimates global burnout costs $8.9 trillion annually. Seramount research shows burned-out employees are 2.6 times more likely to leave. HR leaders can redesign work to sustain energy, protecting focus time, balancing workloads, and supporting caregivers and historically marginalized groups who benefit most from well-designed hybrid flexibility.
These are not “extras”—they are the conditions that enable people to meet the outcome standards business leaders set.
The Step Leaders Still Underestimate: Listening as Strategic Infrastructure
Even the best-defined standards will fail if employees don’t see their experiences reflected in them. What matters isn’t just listening—it’s structured listening that feeds directly into change management. When organizations gather real insight through voice sessions, focused dialogues, and ongoing feedback, then use those insights to shape decisions, productivity stays grounded in reality and employees trust the process.
Listening shows employees they are partners in shaping how work evolves. It reduces skepticism. It surfaces friction early. And it turns productivity from something policed to something co-owned.
Listening is the system that keeps transparency alive.
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Redefining Productivity Is HR’s Leadership Mandate
The future of productivity will not be restored by mandates, monitoring, or nostalgia for pre-pandemic norms. It will be shaped by whether organizations define productivity with clarity, measure it transparently, and refine it continuously with their people.
HR leaders are uniquely positioned to lead that shift—not by choosing sides in the hybrid debate, but by establishing the frameworks that move the conversation beyond presence and toward performance.
Hybrid work can expose fractures or fuel transformation. The difference depends on whether HR leads the redefinition—or lets legacy assumptions write the next chapter.
