Keeping employees as motivated and productive as possible is critical for every type of business environment. However, without finding an effective way to measure productivity, it is impossible to determine if you have an issue with efficiency and productivity in your workplace or how to resolve issues.
Workers may be distracted by everything from social media and smartphones to personal phone calls and more while at work. These are only a few of the possible factors that can affect efficiency and productivity. If you are preparing to measure your employees’ productivity in the workplace, consider these factors for the best overall results.
Why It’s Important to Measure Employee Productivity?
Before you attempt to measure productivity in your workplace, you need to understand clearly why this is important. Productive workers are more valuable and important to your organization than lazy or distracted workers. These are the individuals you should reward with higher wages and promotions and they may be trusted to complete more detailed or critical tasks.
In order for your company to perform at a high level, you need to maximize the efforts of your high-performance workers and weed out low-performance workers over time. However, keep in mind that high-performance workers may sometimes put forth their best effort and fail for other critical reasons. Your measurement efforts should take this into account and should focus on determining where productivity issues are and what the cause is.
1. Expectations Should Be Clearly Communicated
To accurately assess the efforts of your workers, you need to set clear and defined expectations up-front. Your team should be aware of the factors that you are measuring their performance on so that they can clearly put forth their best effort in these areas. By communicating your intent to measure performance up-front, you are telling your team directly that you expect them to work to their full potential with a focus on specific factors.
You should be open to two-way communication and openly solicit opinions and feedback from your team to refine your assessment process and your operations or processes. Remember that effective communication is critical to the success of your business and is necessary for you to accurately determine what aspects of your business need to be improved on. This also shows your employees that you care about their efforts and may be a motivating force that encourages them to always do their best.
2. Time-Consuming Tasks Should Be Eliminated
Through your assessment efforts, you may notice that some processes or practices are bogging down even your highest-performing workers. These tasks may be related to outdated technology or unnecessarily complex processes.
Focus on eliminating unnecessary or burdensome tasks when possible. You can also use software tools to automate repetitive processes or to eliminate unnecessary steps. This effort on your part will promote improved productivity and efficiency in the future. Essentially, it may boost productivity throughout your departments in different ways, including the efforts of both higher and lower-performing workers.
3. Measuring Productivity Is a Continuous Process
Remember that productivity is not something that requires a one-time assessment. You should continually focus on assessing productivity and efficiency in your workplace. While you may make some steps to improve productivity today, keep in mind that you and your team will benefit from continuous assessments and updates in the months and years to come.
In addition, periodic assessments tell your team that you are interested in seeing them improve their performance in different ways and that you are open to their suggestions to improve processes. It also shows them that you are willing to do what it takes on your end to improve their productivity.
To review productivity on a regular basis, some business owners and managers will even ask for daily progress reports from employees or review daily productivity reports. This effort may seem like overkill in some situations, but it can be an effective way to quickly identify problems and to make adjustments as soon as possible for the best overall results.
Conclusion
Productivity is a critical element in any type of business environment, but it can be inherently difficult to review and assess. Remember that productivity issues may signify that some employees are not working as hard or as intelligently as possible, but these issues may also indicate problems with processes or functions in the overall operational activities of the company.
Savvy business owners and managers will review productivity regularly to determine where potential issues lie and how to best resolve them. By updating processes, promoting high-performing workers and continuously assessing the situation, you can help your company achieve its goals.
