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PERFORMANCE & PRODUCTIVITY

Effect of The Human Energy Crisis on Productivity & Workplace Happiness

January 24, 2023, 5-min. read
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Employers have invested unprecedented resources in employee mental health and well-being. Yet, in spite of the growing momentum, we’re still early on the journey.

The human energy crisis (HEC) is the new workplace challenge causing strain on the invaluable human capital that keeps our companies running. Sitting central to the rise of poor mental health across the continent, unpredictable productivity, and talent shortages in key industries, HEC is, to a degree, the new normal.

However, there is a path through the fog of our post-pandemic funk built around the management of critical employee touch points through a revamped culture of employee engagement management, performance management practices, recognition, reward, and career handling focused on context-led data.


Above all else, it’s about leaders creating a culture of work that’s sustainably positive.

Here at LutherOne, we’re at pains to agree - we know first-hand just how effective renewed cultures of performance management can be on workplace engagement and energy levels.

So what does renewable and sustainable workplace culture look like, and how does it work to mitigate the worst of the human energy crisis?

In the face of a human energy crisis, how do we make work sustainable?

The flexibility to handle hybridity

As multiple reports have shown, employees desire the freedom to work remotely and asynchronously, and will actively seek out opportunities that give them the freedom to choose when they work in or outside of the office.

Business leaders that refuse to adapt, suffer the most.

From creating a workforce of bitter staff to the rise of proximity bias in promotional opportunities, poor remote workforce management is a straight line to alienated staff, poor retention of talent, and a team of people who see their post-pandemic needs not being met.

The power of continuous feedback

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Post-pandemic performance management has become, for some, a millstone.

Again, it’s a question of adaptability - business leaders who have refused to change with the times and factor in novel forms of workforce feedback and recognition are finding workers disengage faster and work less productively.

Here at LutherOne, we’ve pioneered continuous feedback performance management platforms, where employees can clearly and concisely reference their performance, deliverables, real-time reflections, team meetings, and project updates via a single platform.

Continuous Listening by LutherOne

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This creates a culture of clear communication between workers, peers, and management, supporting more accountability for performance, in real-time. This has been proven to provide quality engagement that's of high value for workers and managers both.

Are you rewarding your team in the right way?

How are you rewarding your team members? Are they being publicly supported, and recognized for the right sort of work? And does this culture of recognition reduce proximity bias and reaffirm your commitment to fair feedback and positivity?

While much of the driving force behind the great resignation was a sudden and shocking awareness that work/life balance needed realignment, another critical point of contention was that professional recognition for our labor - especially amid a crisis - was woefully out of sync.

Benefit, commission, and perk systems became null and void, and slow-moving business leaders refused to fill the hole. So what replaced them? Many companies simply didn’t, and those have suffered more from a lack of employee engagement than most.

The fix lies in meeting our new digital age head-on by boosting rewards and celebrating credibility through a combination of internally recognized gamified award systems (something we factor into our recognition product plugin called Celebr8) and contemporary, hyper-personalized benefit systems, that meet the needs of a modern workforce. And when gamification increases engagement, employers can be assured that these small but mighty adjustments to recognition make a huge difference to workforce outcomes.

The bottom line

Business leaders don’t need to change the world or rip up decades of service provision overnight to stop the sapping of workforce energy or engagement. But a realignment of company values to meet the needs of a modern workforce is a must. Without doing so, your current and future workforce will never perform to the best of their ability and you’ll continue to operate at a suboptimal level!

Ready to step-up your performance management game too? Reach out today for a free demo.

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