HR director named the main mistake of companies in the struggle for efficiency

By the end of 2025, almost half of working Russians faced professional burnout, and the reason for this trend lies not only in high levels of stress, but also in the spread of so-called toxic productivity. On February 5, Valentina Romanova, HR director of the development company Level Group, told Izvestia about this.

According to her, toxic productivity creates a false sense of efficiency when employees evaluate their own value not by the results achieved, but by the degree of fatigue and the number of hours worked.

"Toxic productivity is a trap in which an employee replaces the real result with the process of eternal employment. A person begins to measure his value by the degree of fatigue: "I sat up until night, I didn't have lunch, so I'm a hero." This problem can be especially acute for millennials, who tend to overwork and not always notice the first signs of fatigue. However, this approach causes direct losses for businesses. A burned-out employee starts making mistakes, his engagement drops, and the company, in fact, pays full salary for half of the real return. In 2026, when the competition for talent is only intensifying, it becomes simply unprofitable to maintain a culture of "hard work," Romanova stressed.

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As an alternative, the expert suggests moving to a model of informed performance, in which the focus is not on the number of hours worked, but on the employee's contribution to business performance. This approach, in her opinion, requires a revision of the usual employment formats and greater flexibility on the part of employers.

"Employers should consider a gradual shift away from the rigid 9 to 6 schedule in favor of a meaning- and result-oriented model. When work turns into a formal "sitting out the hours," engagement inevitably drops. An approach where the team is treated flexibly seems more promising: for example, they open up opportunities for part—time employment or allow employees to run several projects in parallel," the HR Director noted.

Romanova added that transparent communication within companies remains an important element of the fight against burnout. According to her, toxic productivity often takes root in organizations where employees do not understand what they are valued for and do not receive feedback from management.

"Today, it is critically important to transform the corporate culture, shifting the focus from process control to evaluating the actual result. In this regard, the example of zoomers is indicative. They are quite rightly perplexed: "Why sit in the office if the task has already been solved?". And there is a rational grain in this approach that businesses should adopt. Healthy productivity is based not on the number of hours worked, but on awareness and the ability to save resources on time," the expert concluded.

On January 20, Lidiya Inshina, a clinical psychologist, specialist in manipulation and extreme communication, told how to deal with stress during work. She noted that one small object on the desktop is enough to remind you of your goals or life. It serves as a visual trigger that helps you quickly get out of a state of anxiety and restore inner balance.

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