Federal workplace productivity often depends on reducing friction

Workplace design, technology and employee experience all play a role in how effectively federal work gets done.

Terry Gerton

October 20, 2026 10:54 am

3 min read

A meeting is on the calendar, the participants are in the room and the agenda is ready to go. Then somebody tries to share a screen. Someone else can’t get the audio working. Before the discussion gets around to whatever prompted the meeting in the first place, several minutes have been spent dealing with the technology. According to John Sparks, Logitech’s head of federal, that experience is common enough that half of the respondents in research conducted by Logitech and Market Connections said they frequently needed IT support just to start or join a meeting.

Since the pandemic, debates over remote work, return-to-office policies and attendance requirements have kept productivity at the center of workplace discussions. Yet much of that debate focuses on where work happens. Sparks approaches the issue from a different direction.

“What it really comes down to in productivity is really three things: Can employees communicate? Can they coordinate? And can they deliver on the mission task at hand?” he said. The definition shifts attention from presence to performance.

Productivity is influenced by small factors that rarely appear in management reports. When one conference room operates differently than the one across the hall, or when employees move among offices, shared workspaces and meeting rooms that were configured at different times and for different purposes, technology that should fade into the background instead demands attention at the very moment people are trying to get work done. Sparks argues those interruptions matter because of their cumulative effect.

“We can’t join the meeting. We can’t start the meeting,” he said. “It just really distracts from what you’re there to do, and employees shouldn’t have to deal with that.” Over time, the minutes spent troubleshooting become part of the cost of doing business.

Leaders control more than policy

Governmentwide workplace policies may be set elsewhere, but decisions about technology, workspace design and employee support are typically made much closer to home. Sparks emphasized consistency, arguing that employees should not have to relearn their work environment every time they move to a different room or a different building. The point is not that every workspace must look identical. It is that the workplace should be predictable enough that employees can focus on their jobs rather than on the mechanics of getting through the day. Standardization can reduce unnecessary friction by making the workplace more predictable for employees.

The issue becomes especially important in secure facilities. Employees may spend part of the day in a conventional office environment and part of it inside a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), moving between different systems, different security requirements and different technological limitations. Security concerns will always shape those environments, but Sparks noted that employee experience still matters. The challenge for leaders is identifying opportunities to improve employee experience without compromising security requirements.

As agencies think about workplace performance, Sparks says they should also pay attention to factors that are often dismissed as matters of comfort rather than productivity. Ergonomics, acoustics and workspace design may not receive the same attention as major IT modernization efforts, yet employees experience them every day. Poor lighting can be distracting, while bad acoustics can make collaboration more difficult and an uncomfortable workstation can contribute to fatigue over the course of a long day. Those conditions are not usually dramatic enough to trigger corrective action on their own, but they influence how easily employees move through the work that organizations are asking them to perform.

Where employees and managers agree

When it comes to productivity, the interests of employees and managers are not particularly far apart. Employees want technology that works reliably, a workplace that makes sense and fewer interruptions between themselves and their assignments. Leaders want performance, security and a return on the investments they make in their workforce and infrastructure. Both groups benefit when work becomes easier to accomplish.

For Sparks, that reality provides a straightforward way to judge success. “I think it really comes down to one basic thing: Did we make the work easier to get done?” he said. “It’s not so much about presence; it really comes down to performance.”