By THERE’S A TON of workplace jargon we all have to navigate, but here’s a new term to get your head around — “workplace friction.”
This isn’t terribly new. Stanford Professor Bob Sutton — well known for his book The No Asshole Rule — says that workplace friction is “simply putting obstacles in front of people that slow them down, that make their jobs more difficult, and maybe a little bit more frustrating.”
In fact, Prof. Sutton’s latest book speaks to this topic — The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder.
But sometimes, workplace friction can be a good thing.
Healthy competition between colleagues over how to solve a customer problem, or debating a new idea because it’s not helping to achieve the overall goal, are examples of “good” friction that can help the larger organization.
However, friction that isn’t managed properly, especially when it’s negative, can lead to conflict. That’s when it becomes a business problem.
One company that is tackling workplace friction is Fount, and they are “a platform that helps companies identify and reduce work friction.” Based in Washington, D.C. — a city that knows a little about workplace friction — Fount recently released some research on the topic from its 2023 Work Friction Survey.
A huge gap between leaders and employees
THE SURVEY CLEARLY SHOWS “a massive gap between how business leaders and employees perceive work friction.” While nearly half of employees said that workplace friction has gotten worse, this is wildly at odds with three-quarters of business leaders who believe “that work friction had not changed or had even improved.”
That’s a big but not surprising gap.
Fount’s research also found that:
- Work friction is a likely contributor to absenteeism and attrition. According to Fount: Nine out of 10 employees (95%) said that “work friction makes them feel bad about their job, with 37% of employees saying work friction makes them feel so bad they want to quit or take days off. In short, work friction likely plays a significant role in absenteeism and attrition.”
- Work friction can stifle personal productivity and quality customer service. According to Fount: Some 68% of employees feel that “work friction has a negative impact on their personal productivity and their ability to provide strong customer service.”
- Work friction can be costly. According to Fount: Employees waste two hours a day trying to work around work friction. For a company with 10,000 employees, that’s some $80 million lost.
- Employees are checking out. According to Fount: Work friction contributes to absenteeism, low productivity, and poor customer service.
Fount’s’s 2023 Work Friction survey shows that the problem with workplace friction is likely getting worse for many organizations. According to the analysis, “Although 91% of leader respondents said work friction reduction is a priority for their organizations, only 42% have so far taken action to reduce it, and less than 20% are tackling work friction in employees’ day-to-day work, where it most often occurs.”
“A stark divide” in the workplace
Christophe Martel, the co-founder and CEO of Fount, offered this insight into the research:
“While most leaders believe they are well-informed about the work friction their employees experience, this research clearly indicates a stark divide … Despite record investment in learning and development, staffing, and technology to make work better, employee quit rates have more than doubled in the last decade …”
He added this:
“Work friction symptoms are usually apparent, like absenteeism and low productivity. A business leader might first try to address those symptoms with a cash bonus for high performers or strict time-off rules. But … treating only the symptoms means problems will persist or could even get more complicated.”
A management concept worth a good look
ONE MORE THING: Managing workplace friction is a fairly recent concept. As recently as 2012, the Harvard Business Review was still writing about The Darwinian Workplace, a “winners-take-all” approach where “better workers take more assignments, and the others get what remains. … Over time, it may induce low performers to quit, leading to a higher-performing workforce and a constantly rising bar.”
A “higher-performing workforce” is pretty common goal for most companies, but in some organizations it fostered conduct where employees battled to see who would ultimately succeed. There was more productivity in the end, but in many cases, solid employees were discarded simply because they didn’t have the mental makeup to play these games.
Still, reducing workforce friction on the job is an important goal and CAN make for a more productive workplace. It’s a step in the right direction from The Darwinian Workplace to a management system taking the opposite approach — reducing workplace friction in order to get the very best out of people.
About the 2023 Work Friction Survey: Fount Global Inc.’s 2023 Work Friction Survey was fielded in August 2023 in collaboration with survey partner RepData. A total of 706 panelists were sourced from across North America, Europe, and ANZ (Australia-New Zealand) using multimodal collection: 506 employees completed an 11-question survey online; 200 HR, business, and C-suite leaders completed a 4-question survey in telephone interviews. Both surveys included closed- and open-ended questions; the latter were coded to generate quantifiable results for comparison with closed-ended responses.
