Most employees want to be productive. There’s a sense of accomplishment when one’s work is done fast and efficiently. Employees are further rewarded when they learn how impactful their role is in helping the company reach its goals.
To help employees achieve high levels of productivity, management teams can analyze data points around speed, efficiency, customer satisfaction, competitive standing, and a plethora of other workforce productivity measurements. Workforce analytics software can help with productivity management.
What Happens When Productivity isn’t Measured?
Management teams without a system in place for productivity monitoring can see negative impacts throughout their operational and overhead costs. Poor productivity management doesn’t just affect one part of their operations, but instead ripples throughout all of its facets. This can make diagnosing and improving workforce productivity challenging.
When an organization’s operations suffer from low productivity, costs of labor and supplies often increase, as more time and resources are depleted to complete work. Losing progress on quarterly goals can lead to a loss in employee morale and ultimately a loss in an organization's competitiveness in the marketplace. Absenteeism and losing sight of objectives can also occur, further harming overall productivity.
What should a company look for when they’re monitoring and measuring productivity? In short, the entire lifecycle of a project can be broken down into measurable metrics to quantify productivity with workforce analytics software. These metrics can then uncover workflow bottlenecks in anything from employee training modules, to service and sales, to customer support. In short, organizational leaders will have visibility into how work is getting done, including what’s working, and what’s not.
Start from the Beginning: Measure Employee Productivity During Training
Most modern organizations will use training modules or another type of training program to ramp their employees for success in their roles. The training module may provide an insider view into how well they understood the material, but most training modules stop there. Management teams also need an understanding of when and how the new knowledge can be applied on-the-job. This includes how quickly the training is progressing and any parts of the process where employees are experiencing unnecessary downtime or difficulty.
Is the loss in productivity due to the difficulty of the material, or are employees working too long without breaks? Perhaps they lose interest in the material and are distracted by browsing on other apps? Workforce analytics software provide data points on how employees engage with their training, including insights into which sections are ineffective, inefficient or need the most improvement.
Focus on Strategy Over Management: Measure Employee Productivity Without Micromanaging
Simply put, a management style that is too strict can stifle how and when work is done. One of the biggest challenges in productivity management is in knowing when and where to course-correct without slowing the employee or work down with too many interruptions and distractions.
With workforce analytics and productivity management software, management teams will be able to pinpoint where most issues occur in workflows and why. Managers can then do what they do best – create and implement strategies that can be tested over time. ActivTrak is built with in-depth reporting features that breaks-out data into days, weeks, months, and years to easily measure and compare productivity changes.
Productivity Management Across the Whole Organization: Measure Employee Productivity of All Employees
Most modern organizations are composed of a variety of team structures. Increasingly popular due to their expansive talent pools and expertise are remote workers and specialized small teams. However, juggling varying work schedules and styles and upholding all team members to the same work standards can be challenging. How can an organization ensure that time and resources are being used effectively when the team structures are diverse?
Workforce analytics and productivity management software like ActivTrak works by recording data in the background and then itemizes workflows into a productivity measurement scorecard for teams. With these productivity data and tools, managers will be able to pinpoint top-performing employees, allowing them to study the behaviors and workflows key to their success. They can then coach other employees to replicate the same levels of productivity.
Organizations with a workforce analytics software in place can expect their employees to consistently perform their tasks efficiently and in a timely manner. Not only does ActivTrak measure productivity, but it also contextualizes data using reports that allow for better-informed strategies and clearer accountability. Learn more about how ActivTrak can help your organization better track employee productivity patterns and optimize workflows.
