For decades, governments have treated “workforce productivity” as a kind of secular truth: measurable, improvable, and essential to economic and public‑sector performance. It appears in budget papers, reform agendas, capability frameworks, and ministerial speeches. It is invoked to justify restructures, digital transformation, performance systems, and cultural change programs.

But what if workforce productivity is not a neutral fact, but a myth; a powerful story that governments keep telling themselves to make sense of complexity, justify interventions, and stabilise institutional identity?

In a post‑modern world, where work is fragmented, meaning is contested, and systems are anything but stable, the idea of workforce productivity begins to look less like an objective reality and more like a governance device. And that matters, because myths shape decisions just as much as data.

The modernist dream of productivity no longer fits the world we work in

The traditional idea of productivity comes from a modernist worldview: stable systems, measurable inputs and outputs, linear improvements, and universal levers. It assumes that work can be observed, quantified, and optimised in the same way factories once were.

But contemporary public‑sector work is not factory work. It is relational, cognitive, interpretive, and often ambiguous. It involves judgement, coordination, negotiation, and sense‑making. Activities that resist simple measurement.

As scholars of work and post‑modernism argue, the very notion of a single, objective definition of productivity collapses under the conditions of late modernity. Work is too diverse, too distributed, and too socially constructed to be captured by a single metric or model. Yet governments continue to act as if the old assumptions still hold.

If productivity is so important, why can’t we measure it?

The public sector has never been more instrumented. We have dashboards, KPIs, performance frameworks, digital tools, and data streams. And yet, despite all this visibility, productivity remains elusive.

This is not a technical failure. It is a conceptual one.

Measurement systems struggle because they are built on outdated assumptions about what work is and how value is created. They privilege what is visible, countable, and administratively convenient. They miss the relational, anticipatory, and interpretive labour that actually holds public institutions together.

The result is a paradox: the more we try to measure productivity, the less meaningful the concept becomes.

The myth persists because it is useful politically and institutionally

If productivity cannot be reliably defined or measured, why does it remain so central to public‑sector reform? Because myths are not sustained by accuracy. They are sustained by utility.

Productivity provides governments with:

1. A narrative of control

In complex systems, leaders need a way to signal that they are steering the ship. Productivity offers a language of levers, drivers, and interventions. Even when the underlying system is not controllable in that way.

2. A justification for reform

Productivity crises are politically convenient. They legitimise restructures, efficiency drives, digital programs, and cultural change initiatives. The myth creates the problem that reform then promises to solve.

3. A sense of coherence

Public‑sector work is increasingly fragmented and ambiguous. Productivity provides a unifying story. A way to make sense of diverse activities under a single banner of “value”.

4. A visibility device

As governance scholars note, institutions rely on visibility practices to make work legible. Productivity metrics create the appearance of clarity, even when they obscure more than they reveal.

In this sense, productivity functions less as a measurement and more as a technology of governance or a way of organising attention, behaviour, and legitimacy.

The danger is not the myth itself but mistaking it for truth

Myths can be productive. They can mobilise effort, coordinate action, and create shared purpose. The problem arises when institutions forget that productivity is a story, not a fact.

When the myth becomes dogma, several risks emerge:

  • reform fatigue driven by perpetual “productivity crises”

  • misaligned incentives that reward visibility over value

  • erosion of trust as workers experience measurement as surveillance

  • underinvestment in relational and cognitive work because it is harder to quantify

  • policy distortion as governments chase metrics instead of outcomes.

The public sector does not need to abandon productivity. It needs to recognise it for what it is: a narrative tool, not an empirical truth.

A more honest conversation is possible

If productivity is a myth, the goal is not to discard it but to use it consciously. That means:

  • acknowledging the limits of measurement

  • valuing forms of work that resist quantification

  • designing systems that support judgement, not just output

  • shifting from “productivity levers” to capability, coherence, and institutional learning

  • treating productivity as a story we choose, not a truth we inherit.

This reframing opens space for a more mature conversation about public‑sector value. One that reflects the complexity of contemporary work rather than forcing it into outdated models.

Conclusion: The myth endures because it serves us but it should not blind us

Workforce productivity is not a stable, measurable property of workers. It is a powerful institutional myth that governments use to navigate uncertainty, justify reform, and maintain coherence in a post‑modern world.

Recognising this does not weaken the public sector. It strengthens it.

Because once we stop pretending productivity is an objective truth, we can start designing systems that reflect the real nature of public work: relational, cognitive, adaptive, and profoundly human.